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AUTHOR: 


GIDDINGS,  FRANKLIN 


TITLE: 


RESPONSIBLE  STATE 


PLACE: 


BOSTON 


DA  TE : 


1918 


I  ' 


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1918 


Giddings,  Franklin  Henry,  1855-  1931.      ■ 

...  The  responsible  state;  a  reexamination  of  funda- 
mental political  doctrines  in  the  light  of  world  war  and 
the  menace  of  anarchism,  by  Franklin  Henry  Giddings  ... 
Boston  and  New  York,  Houghton  Mifflin  company,  1918. 

X,  ilj,  107,  ill  p.,  1  I.  19J'"'".  (Brown  university.  The  Colver  lectures, 
1918)       ^hm 

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PUBLISHED    BY 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 


MEDICAL  RESEARCH  AND  HUMAN  PROGRESS. 
By  W.  W.  Keen.      1917. 

THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE  A  Reexamination  of 
Fundamental  Political  Doctrines  in  the  Light  of 
World  War  and  the  Menace  of  Anarchism.  By 
Franklin  Henry  Giddings.     1918- 


THE  COLVER  LECTURES 
IN  BROWN  UNIVERSITY 

1918 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

By 

Franklin  Henry  Giddings 


IT3E" 


t 


(gvo^mi  Uttii7et0it^.   ^^e  Cofber  ^ututtn,  1918 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

A  Reexamination  of  Fundamental  Political  Doctrines 

in  the  Light  of  World  War  and  the  Menace 

of  Anarchism 


BY 
FRANKLIN  HENRY  GIDDINGS,  LLJ>. 

Frc^essor  of  Sociology  and  the  History  of  Civilization 

in  Columbia  University.     Sometime  Professor 

of  Political  Science  in  Bryn  Mawr  College 


« 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

^J)e  mitoeri^itie  pce^^  Cambcitige 

1918 


If 


tA 


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o 

9 


.  <-.-■ 


COPYRIGHT,  1918,  BY  BROWN  UNIVERSITY 
ALL  RIGHTS  RKSERVBD 

Published  August  rgiS 


I 
i 


THE  Colver  lectureship  is  provided  by  a  fund  of 
$10,000  presented  to  the  University  by  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Jesse  L.  Rosenberger  of  Chicago  in  memory  of 
Mrs.  Rosenberger's  father,  Charles  K.  Colver  of  the 
class  of  1842.  The  following  sentences  from  the  letter 
accompanying  the  gift  explain  the  purposes  of  the  foun- 
dation :  — 

"It  is  desired  that,  so  far  as  possible,  for  these  lectures 
only  subjects  of  particular  importance  and  lecturers  emi- 
nent in  scholarship  or  of  other  marked  qualifications  shall 
be  chosen.  It  is  desired  that  the  lectures  shaU  be  dis- 
tinctive and  valuable  contributions  to  human  knowledge, 
known  for  their  quality  rather  than  their  number.  In- 
come, or  portions  of  income,  not  used  for  lectures  may 
be  used  for  the  publication  of  any  of  the  lectures  deemed 
desirable  to  be  so  published." 

Charles  Kendrick  Colver  (1821-1896)  was  a  graduate 
of  Brown  University  of  the  class  of  1842.  The  necrologist 
of  the  University  wrote  of  him:  "He  was  distinguished 
for  his  broad  and  accurate  scholarship,  his  unswerving 
personal  integrity,  championship  of  truth,  and  obedience 
to  God  in  his  daily  life.  He  was  severely  simple  and  un- 
worldly in  character." 

The  lectures  aheady  published  in  this  series  are:  — 

1916 

The  American  Cmceptian  of  Liberty  and  Government,  by 
Frank  Johnson  Goodnow,  LL.D.,  President  of  Johns 
Hopkins  University.   In  boards,  63  pages;  price,  50 

cents. 

1917 

Medical  Research  and  Human  Welfare,  by  W.  W.  Keen, 
M.D.,  LL.D.  (Brown),  Emeritus  Professor  of  Sur- 
gery, JeflFerson  Medical  CoUege,  PhUadelphia.  In 
cloth,  160  pages;  price,  $1.25. 


1 


PREFACE 

These  lectures  make  in  print  a  small  booJc ; 
nevertheless,  it  is  a  product  of  long  reflection 
checked  up  by  a  varied  experience.  As  professor 
of  political  science  I  taught  the  orthodox  theory 
of  the  state.  As  professor  subsequently  of  sociol- 
ogy, somewhat  severely  conceived  as  a  study  sta- 
tistical in  method,  and  in  content  bordering  on 
psychology  and  on  history,  I  have  increasingly 
felt  the  unreality  of  Teutonic  political  philos- 
ophy, while  05  an  editorial  writer  on  the  staff 
of  "  The  Independent''  since  1900  I  have  been 
compelled  to  take  account  of  momentous  hap- 
penings in  a  world  under  than  the  academic. 

From  time  to  time  I  have  printed  more  tech- 
nical discussions  of  some  of  the  topics  here  pre- 
sented. Readers  who  may  be  interested  in  them 
are  referred  to  the  chapters:  "  The  Nature  and 
Conduct  of  Political  Majorities,"  "  The  Des- 
tinies of  Democracy,''  ''The  Consent  of  the 
Governed,"  ''The  Survival  of  Civil  Liberty," 
and  "  The  Gospel  of  Non-Resistance"  in  "De- 
mocracy and  Empire"  ;  to  an  article  on  "Sov- 
ereignty and  Government"  in  the  "Political 
Science  Quarterly,"  vol,  xxi,  no,  1 ;  to  the  presi- 

vu 


i 


PREFACE 


dential  address,  ^^  Social  Theory  and  Public 
Policy,''  before  the  American  Sociological  Soci- 
ety in  1910,  ^^ American  Journal  of  Sociology,'* 
vol,  XVI,  no,  5  ;  and  to  the  Carroll  D,  Wright 
lecture,  *'  Americanism  in  War  and  in  Peace," 
published  a  year  ago  by  Clark  University, 

To  my  colleagues,  in  particular  to  Professor 
Munroe  Smith  and  to  Professor  Howard  Lee 
McBain,  I  am  indebted  for  valued  suggestions, 

Franklin  Henry  Giddings 
New  York,  May,  1918 


CONTENTS 
I 

ORIGINS  OF  THE  STATE 

1.  Primitive  Social  Cohesion        ...  1 

St,  Political  Beginnings 6 

S.  Patriotism IS 

n 

POWERS  OF  THE  STATE 

1.  The  Few  and  the  Many    ....  17 

Protocracy 19 

2.  Extent  of  Domination        ....  20 

(1)  Absolutism 23 

(2)  Anarchy 28 

(3)  Privileged  Aristocracy   ....  29 

(4)  Radical  Democracy       ....  30 

(5)  Natural  Aristocracy  in  the  Demo- 

cratic Republic 33 

3.  Sovereignty 36 

(1)  The  Metaphysical  Conception   .      .  37 

(2)  The  Sociological  Conception       .      .  45 

Powers  of  the  Sovereign  not  abso- 
lute       •  46 

(a)  Cosmic  Limitations  .      .  46 

(6)  International  Limitations  47 

iz 


CONTENTS 


(c)  Limitations  within:  Con- 

sent of  the  Many  . 

(d)  Moral    Limitations :  Re- 

sponsibiHty 

(3)  Sovereignty  the  Dominant  Hmnan 
Power,  Individual  or  Pluralistic,  in 
a  Politically  Organized  and  PoHti- 
cally  Lidependent  Population 

4.  The  State  Finite  and  Responsible 


47 


47 


48 
48 


m 

RIGHTS  OF  THE  STATE 

1.  The  Good  and  the  Right    ....    49 

2.  Natural  Rights 5D 

(1)  of  the  Community  (a)  to  exist;  (6)  to 

grow  on  equal  terms  with  other 
communities 65 

(2)  of  the  Individual 65 

S.  Positive  Rights 68 

(1)  Rights  of  the  Sovereign  as  Trustee 

(a)  for  the  community;  (6)  for  the 
individual 68 

(2)  The  Right  of  the  Sovereign  to  coerce    68 

(3)  Rights  of  the  Subject  (a)  Life;  (6) 

Security;  (c)  Liberty;  (d)  Oppor- 
tunity        68 

4.  Grounds  and  Limits  of  the  Right  to 

COERCE 69 

z 


CONTENTS 

5.  The  Safeguarding  of  Rights    ...  73 

(1)  Constitution  and  Laws  ....  74 

(2)  The  Habits  of  the  People    ...  74 

IV 
DUTIES  OF  THE  STATE 

1.  To  SAFEGUARD  THE  COMMONWEALTH  .         .  81 

2.  To  FURTHER  A  CIVILIZATION  THAT 

(1)  cherishes  honor ^^ 

(2)  ameliorates ^^ 

(3)  humanizes ^ 

(4)  enlightens ^^ 

(5)  makes  polite ^ 

3.  To  BE  Efficient       .      .      •    .  • .    *      '  ^ 
Avoiding  (a)  a  mechanical  socialism;  (6) 
an  ineffective  individualism  .      .      .106 


/ 


< 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 


ORIGINS  OF  THE  STATE 
The  heads  of  wheat  are  heavy,  in  the 
great  field  across  the  way.  They  are  yel- 
lowing, and  nearly  ripe.  The  swift  onrush 
of  a  summer  storm  will  snap  some  of  them 
off.    The  others  are  safe,  for  their  yet 
green  stalks  are  strong  to  resist,  and  the 
sheets  of  rain  under  a  dragging  thunder- 
cloud will  only  bend  them  over.   In  the 
meadow  beyond,  horses  and  cattle  push 
their  faces  obstinately  into  the  blast.  Men 
work  furiously,  tumbUng  up  windrows  of 
hay,  and  pitching  great  forkfuls  to  the 

"last  load." 

Life  is  a  combat.  Plants,  animals,  hu- 
man beings,  perish  when  they  cease  to 
contend  with  environing  forces.  Animals 
and  men,  driven  by  fear  and  desire,  strug- 
gle not  only  for  physical  existence,  but 

1 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

also  for  conscious  satisfactions.  Human 
beings  toil  to  exist,  they  work  for  satis- 
factions, they  strive  to  attain.  They 
strive  to  attain  possessions  and  power, 
character  and  excellence,  knowledge  and 
wisdom. 

The  struggle  for  existence  and  for  at- 
tainment, unceasing  and  all-comprising, 
is  more  than  an  individual  affair.  For 
each  individual  it  is  complicated  by  the 
struggles  of  other  individuals  more  or  less 
hke  himself.  Also,  efforts  are  combined. 
There  is  team  work:  there  is  cooperation. 
There  is  roaming  together  in  bands  and 
herds.  There  is  dwelling  together  in  ham- 
lets and  burgs,  in  cities  and  nations.  There 
are  mobs  and  town  meetings,  there  are 
battles  and  parliaments,  carnivals  and  pil- 
grimages; there  are  worshiping  throngs. 
There  is  ordered  activity  in  mills,  and 
bargaining  in  marts.  There  are  group 
struggles  and  class  struggles,  there  are 
national  and  imperial  struggles,  as  well 
as  individual  struggles,  for  existence  and 
for  attainment. 


ORIGINS  OF  THE  STATE 

How  collective  effort  began  we  may 
guess,  and  our  guessing  need  not  be  un- 
profitable, but  we  never  shall  perfectly 
know.  When  the  first  chapters  of  written 
history  were  stamped  on  bricks  man  al- 
ready lived  in  towns.  For  uncounted  mil- 
lenniums, before  any  town  was  built,  he 
had  consciously  experimented  with  social 
relations  no  less  than  with  useful  arts  and 
material  possessions.   Back  of  those  mil- 
lenniums lay  dim  ages  through  which  he 
only  groped  his  way,  making  accidental 
discoveries   and  catching   glimpses  now 
and  then  of  possibilities  that  he  could 
neither  understand  nor  greatly  profit  by. 
If  we  try  to  supplement  archaeology 
and  tradition  by  comparative  studies  of 
human  groups  yet  surviving  in  differing 
stages  of  culture,  we  find  the  undertaking 
beset  with  diflSculties,  and  our  conclusions 
at  best  are  little  more  than  probabilities. 
Three  or  four  things  only  are  certain. 
Before   town   dwellers   devised   political 
institutions  men  Uved  in  tribal  aggrega- 
tions.  The  bond  of  cohesion  was  under- 

3 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

stood  to  be  blood  kinship.  Often  it  was 
more  nominal  than  real.  Sometimes  it 
was  admittedly  fictitious,  and  sometimes 
it  was  disregarded  or  broken  through  by 
the  rising  power  of  chieftains  command- 
ing bands  of  personal  followers  recruited 
from  the  outcasts  and  outlaws  of  aUen  or 
conquered  tribes. 

In  many  parts  of  the  world  kinship  was 
traced  in  the  mother  Une,  as,  for  example, 
it  was  in  the  Iroquois  tribes  of  central 
New  York.  Elsewhere  and  in  other  races 
it  was  traced  in  the  father  hne,  as  it  was 
among  the  Hellenic  Greeks,  among  the 
Romans,  among  many,  if  not  all  of  the 
Celts,  and  among  the  ancient  Germans. 
It  is  probable  that  in  many  instances,  but 
not  in  all,  a  patrilinear  kinship  was  pre- 
ceded by  a  matrihnear  kinship. 

Back  of  all  tribal  organizations  were 
smaller  and  less  definite  groupings  Uke 
those  of  the  South  African  Bushmen,  or  of 
the  Veddas  of  Ceylon.  It  is  by  no  means 
certain  that  these  groups  attached  impor- 
tance to  blood  kinship  or  even  recognized 


ORIGINS  OF  THE  STATE 
it.    Fragments  of  evidence  indicate  that 
primitive  social  cohesion  was  essentially 
a  religious  phenomenon.  Everywhere  we 
find  belief  in  an  uncanny  power,  imper- 
sonal and  contagious,  which  our  students 
of  religious  origins  have  agreed  to  call 
"mana,"  the  name  by  which  it  is  known 
among  the  Malay  peoples.  North  Ameri- 
can Indian  names  for  it  were  '^Orenda 
and'Wakunda."  The  Greek  and  Roman 
names  for  it  have  survived  in  words  for 
things  demoniac,  or  virile,  or  virtuous, 
and  the  elemental  meaning  of  ''virtue 
appears  in  the  King  James  version  of  the 
words  of  Jesus  to  the  woman  who  touched 
his  garment:  "I  perceive  that  virtue  is 
gone  out  of  me."   ^'Mana"  could  heal  or 
it  could  kill.    It  could  curse  or  it  could 
bless.    It  was  the  wisdom  of  the  sage, 
the  courage  of  the  warrior,  the  fear  of 
the  coward.    It  is  probable  that  the  ear- 
liest  social  bond  holding  together  more 
individuals  than  composed  a  single  fam- 
ily  was  a  sense  of  sharing  a   common 
"virtue"  or  of  possessing  or  having  ac- 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 
cess  to  a  common  source  or  supply  of 


"mana." 


I  have  prefaced  what  I  am  about  to  say 
upon  ''The  Responsible  State"  by  these 
allusions  to  social  origins  because  at  the 
present  moment  they  have  a  new  and 
peculiar  significance.    The   thoughts  of 
sober-minded  men  have  turned  anew  to 
theories  of  political  life  because  a  Teutonic 
philosophy  of  authority  has  incited,  has 
directed,  and  has  sought  to  justify  the 
most  diabolical  collective  conduct    that 
the  human  race,  in  all  its  career  since  the 
Heidelberg  jaw  was  clothed  in  flesh,  has 
infamously  committed.    This  theory  has 
seized  upon  a  creation  of  the  demoniac 
imagination   and    called   it    The    State, 
spelled  with  a  large  ''T"  and  a  capital 
"S."    To  this  metaphysical  monstrosity 
it  has  attributed  resistless  might  and  ab- 
solute righteousness.    It   proclaims  that 
a  Prussianized  empire  may  without  guilt 
perpetrate    acts    that    a    civilized    state 
would  brand  as  crime  if  they  were  perpe- 

6 


' 


J 


ORIGINS  OF  THE  STATE 

trated  without  orders  by  an  individual 
subject.  To  exorcise  this  monstrosity  and 
cast  it  out  forever,  the  civilized  world  is 
arrayed  against  the  Hohenzollern  in  deso- 
lating conflict.  Back  of  all  immediate 
aims  lies  the  ulterior  purpose  of  the  allied 
nations  to  define  the  powers  and  to  estab- 
lish the  supremacy  of  a  responsible  state, 
accountable  to  the  conscience  of  mankind. 
That  state  is  finite,  concrete,  and  histori- 
cal. To  understand  it,  in  its  origins,  its 
character,  and  its  functioning,  is  to  know 
for  what  cause  we  gladly  give  all  else  that 
men  hold  dear. 

Essentially,  the  issue  is  simple  and 
plain.  But  concrete  human  life  is  not  sim- 
ple, and  the  human  mind  is  far  more  a 
thing  of  conflicting  instincts  and  turbu- 
lent passions  than  of  clear  vision  and 
logically  ordered  thought.  Cowardice  and 
folly  have  ever  been  the  handmaidens  of 
iniquity,  and  in  the  mighty  endeavor  to 
which  we  are  committed  we  have  to  meet 
not  only  the  gun-fire  of  the  Hun,  but,  as 
well,  the  specious  objections  of  men  and 

7 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

women  who  try  to  exploit  reasonableness 
in  the  name  of  a  conscientious  pacifism, 
or,  with  ill-concealed  treachery,  to  abet  a 
German  peace.  These  persons  have  seized 
upon  what  they  ignorantly  conceive  to 
be  our  scientific  knowledge  of  social  ori- 
gins and  social  psychology  to  prove  that 
"what  men  fight  for"  is  only  the  animal 
satisfaction  of  brutal  combativeness,  or 
the  hysterical  explosion  of  herd  instinct. 
In  particular  they  try  to  identify  pa- 
triotism with  herd  instinct  and  thereby  to 
discredit  patriotic  feeUng.  Now,  patriot- 
ism is  not  herd  instinct  and  the  difference 
is  not  merely  one  of  degree.  Between  herd 
instinct  and  patriotism  there  is  a  pro- 
found difference  of  kind  and  ages  of  social 
evolution,  and  the  wish  to  make  this  fact 
quite  clear  is  my  reason  for  going  back  to 
social  origins  before  attempting  to  de- 
scribe the  responsible  state.  Patriotism 
arose  when  herd  instinct  failed.  It  grap- 
pled with  a  task  for  which  herd  instinct, 
helped  out  by  tribal  habit,  proved  to  be 
inadequate. 

8 


ORIGINS  OF  THE  STATE 

Neither  the  primitive  horde,  nor  its  suc- 
cessor the  tribe,  was  in  any  true  sense  of 
the  word  a  poUtical  society.  Even  the 
tribal  confederation  was  not,  strictly 
speaking,  a  state.  PoUtical  society  came 
into  existence  when  it  became  necessary 
to  devise  a  plan  of  organization  broad  and 
elastic  enough  to  include  men  of  more  than 
one  cult  and  of  more  than  one  kinship, 
or,  as  often  happened,  of  personal  allegi- 
ance to  more  than  one  chieftain.  That 
necessity  confronted  practical  men  when 
they  began  to  live  in  towns. 

The  earliest  towns  grew  up,  we  may  sur- 
mise, about  sacred  places,  or  at  places  that 
could  be  defended  against  the  elements  or 
against  enemies.  To  guard  the  shrine  or 
the  stronghold  garrisons  were  appointed. 
Priests,  soldiers,  and  craftsmen  specialized 
their  functions.  Pilgrims  came,  bearing 
gifts.  Barter  flourished.  Stores  of  food 
were  accumulated,  and  suppUes  of  uten- 
sils and  weapons.  Barter  became  trade 
and  traders   became  merchants,  and  all 


V 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

this  while  the  inhabitants  were  still  clans- 
men and  tribesmen,  jealous  of  clan  names 
and  rights,  perpetuating  clan  feuds  and 
counting  men  of  other  breeds  than  their 
own  as  enemy  aliens. 

But  enemy  aliens,  the  broken  and  ruined 
men  of  conquered  tribes,  there  always  were 
in  primitive  society.  Tribal  forays  multi- 
plied them.  Here  and  there  they  found  pro- 
tection and  gave  service  as  the  personal 
followers  of  ambitious  chieftains  strong 
enough  to  defy  tribal  resentment.  Towns 
gave  them  new  opportunities.  They  could 
hide  themselves  there.  If  skillful  craftsmen, 
they  might  be  tolerated  openly  or  even 
welcomed,  and  their  children  were  accepted 
as  inhabitants,  as  a  matter  of  course. 

So  town  populations  both  differentiated 
and  segregated.  The  older  stock,  proud 
of  its  purer  blood  and  cherishing  its  tra- 
ditions, became  an  aristocracy,  patrician, 
gentile,  and  genteel.  The  newer  stocks, 
sprung  from  enemy  aliens  tolerated  or 
made  welcome  within  the  walls,  lived  on 
and  multiplied  as  social  inferiors.  At  best 

10 


ORIGINS  OF  THE  STATE 

they  were  protected  men,  or  clients.  At 
worst  they  were  dependents,  organized  by 
tens  and  hundreds  in  humiUating  demo- 
cratic equality,  to  mark  them  off  sharply 
from  the  men  of  the  gentes,  among  whom 
distinctions  of  rank  and  station  were  per- 
petuated. In  any  case  they  were  the 
demos,  the  plebeians. 

We  do  not  need  to  argue  that  no  in- 
stinct of  the  herd  held  together  the  het- 
erogeneous factions  of  a  demos,  or  bound 
them  to  a  ruUng  aristocracy.  Moreover, 
they  were  many,  and  always  they  multi- 
pUed  and  grew  strong,  until  they  threat- 
ened patrician  supremacy. 

What,  then,  were  the  ties  or  the  pres- 
sures that  held  together  the  nondescript 
inhabitants  of  a  town  and  made  possible 
the  city-state?  A  sense  of  community  un- 
doubtedly there  was.  The  people  were 
more  than  an  aggregation  of  units  as- 
sembled to  exploit  economic  opportunity. 
They  thought  of  their  polis  as  an  entity, 
and  developed  a  strong  feeUng  for  it.  This 
idea  and   the  associated  feeling  were  a 

11 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

rudimentary  political  consciousness.  It 
had  two  origins,  one  religious,  the  other 
miUtary. 

Plebeians  could  not  share  in  the  sacred 
rites  perpetuated  by  patrician  gentes.  But 
there  were  gods  and  divine  influences  to 
which  patricians  and  plebeians  aUke  could 
turn.  These  were  the  local  or  regional 
sacra,  the  gods  of  the  land.  They  were 
quite  as  truly  sources  of  strength  and  heal- 
ing and  assurances  of  safety,  and  therefore 
as  much  to  be  propitiated  as  were  the  an- 
cestral ghosts  of  the  aristocratic  groups. 
Regional  reUgion  tended  from  the  first  to 
supplant  gentile  reUgion  and  to  become 
the  common  cult  of  townsmen.  In  mili- 
tary matters  a  parallel  development  oc- 
curred. The  older  groups  were  as  jealous 
of  their  right  to  bear  arms  as  they  were 
of  their  gods.  But  they  found  it  increas- 
ingly diflScult,  unaided,  to  defend  their 
privileges  and  possessions.  Accumulating 
wealth  tempted  attack  by  enemies,  and  to 
its  enemies  a  city  was  even  more  truly  an 
entity  than  it  was  to  its  inhabitants.   Re- 

12 


ORIGINS  OF  THE  STATE 

curring  wars  left  no  alternative:  it  was 
necessary  to  organize  plebeians  for  armed 
defense  and  to  muster  them  into  the  city's 
mihtary  forces.  Then,  of  course,  full  pub- 
lic rights  could  not  longer  be  denied.  The 
legal  fiction  of  naturaUzation  was  in- 
vented. Ancient  tribes  and  their  subdi- 
visions had  long  been  locaUzed.  They  had 
their  metes  and  bounds  within  which  aUens 
had  been  admitted  to  Uve.  For  civic  and 
military  purposes  all  dwellers  within  the 
territorial  metes  and  bounds  of  a  locaUzed 
clan  or  moiety  thereof  were  now  declared 
to  be  nominally  members  of  that  clan  or 
moiety.  So  the  ancient  gentile  system 
survived  in  name.  A  new  poUtical  system 
supplanted  it  in  fact. 

As  it  developed,  the  political  system 
became  itself  an  object  of  thought  and  of 
sentiment.  Coerced  by  the  necessity  of 
adaptation  to  changed  and  changing  con- 
ditions, members  of  the  body  poUtic  be- 
came habituated  to  thinking  more  in  ternis 
of  adjustment  and  less  in  terms  of  tradi- 

13 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

tion;  more  in  terms  of  the  present  and  of 
future  possibilities  than  in  terms  of  the 
past;  more  in  terms  of  a  broadening  co- 
operation by  citizens,  less  in  terms  of  kin- 
ship. 

Have  we  not  now  caught  glimpses  of  the 
origins  of  patriotism  and  learned  some- 
thing of  its  nature?  Attachment  to  a 
place  or  region  in  distinction  from  love  of 
kindred,  reverence  for  the  gods  of  the 
land  or  other  regional  sacra  in  distinction 
from  tribal  gods;  a  conamon  interest  in 
economic  opportimities;  a  concurring  will 
to  maintain  by  arms  the  defense  against 
enemies,  and  a  rising  consciousness  of  pos- 
sibiUties  through  continuing  adaptation, 
—  all  these  had  blended  in  a  new  senti- 
ment. That  sentiment  was  patriotism,  a 
growing  volume  of  emotion  shot  through 
with  thought.  Herd  instinct  survived;  it 
survives  now,  but  subordinated  to  ideas. 
The  feehng  for  kindred  survived,  but  sub- 
ordinated to  a  more  inclusive  emotion  and 
to  poUtical  imagination.  Herd  instinct  was 
blind;  patriotism  was  intelligent.    Herd 

u 


ORIGmS  OF  THE  STATE 

instinct  excluded;  patriotism  included  and 
assimilated.  Herd  instinct  and  tribal  feel- 
ing perpetuated  the  past;  patriotism  con- 
structed the  future.  Then  millenniums 
went  by  while  patriotism  broadened  and 
deepened.  The  city-state  lost  itself  in  the 
national  state,  and  the  national  state 
merged  itself  in  the  federal  nation  wherein 
to-day  dwell  men  of  all  the  kindreds  of  the 
earth.  Patriotism  claiming  them  exacts 
sacrifices  from  them,  but  also  it  exalts 
them,  and  generation  after  generation  it 
rebuilds  the  futiu'e. 

So  constituted  and  so  functioning  pa- 
triotism is  the  soul  of  politically  organized 
society,  and  poUtically  organized  society 
animate  with  patriotism  is  the  concrete 
state,  the  subject  of  our  present  concern. 
Upon  "the  pure  idea"  of  the  state,  Pla- 
tonic or  HegeUan,  ethical  or  demoniac,  we 
shall  not  Unger.  "The  state  as  idea"  is 
disembodied  and  irresponsible.  The  re- 
sponsible state  is  a  Uving  population  en- 
gaged in  political  experimentation.  Its 
origins  are  discovered  in  human  behavior. 

15 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

Its  evolution  is  historical.  Its  powers  are 
finite.  Its  rights  are  conditional.  Its  du- 
ties are  practical.  We  have  looked  at  its 
origins,  in  a  swift  but  necessary  glance,  to 
get  our  bearings.  Now  we  shall  turn  our 
attention  upon  the  powers  of  the  respon- 
sible state,  its  rights  and  its  duties. 


n 

POWERS  OF  THE  STATE 
The  city-state  contained  two  embodi- 
ments and  sources  of  poUtical  power,  — 
one,  the  older  gentile  folk,  aristocratic  and 
proud;  the  other,  an  immigrant  populace 
and  its  descendants.  The  aristocracy  was 
a  minority  of  the  total  population,  and  al- 
ways it  was  tending  to  become  relatively 
smaller  as  generations  passed. 

In  this  opposition  of  the  few  to  the 
many  there  was  nothing  exceptional.  In 
any  aggregation  of  human  beings  it  may 
be  found  by  the  discerning,  and  an  under- 
standing of  its  origin  and  significance  is  the 
beginning  of  any  scientific  knowledge  of 
the  powers  of  the  state. 

The  causes  of  it  He  deep  in  the  psy- 
chology of  pluralistic  behavior.  Every- 
thing that  animals  do  and  everything  that 
human  beings  do  is  a  reaction  to  stimula- 
tion.   The  reactions  of  different  individ- 

17 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

uaJs  to  the  same  given  stimulus  are  not 
equally  prompt,  they  are  not  equally 
vigorous,  they  are  not  equally  persistent. 
Also,  the  reactions  of  different  individ- 
uals differ  in  complexity  and  in  volume. 
The  timid  start,  and  scurry  out  of  the  way. 
The  less  timid,  but  dull-witted  and  nu- 
merous, betray  emotion,  —  of  fear  or  of 
anger,  or  of  satisfaction,  or  possibly  of 
exultation.  Exceptional  individuals  react 
intellectually.  These  begin  to  inquire,  to 
examine.  Perhaps  they  think  and  plan. 
They  may  compare  observations  and  ideas 
and  enter  into  discussion.  Only  a  very 
few  out  of  all  the  reacting  units  begin  sys- 
tematic work  to  put  in  operation  a  more 
or  less  well-considered  plan.  With  varying 
degrees  of  persistence  and  of  success  these 
few  make  the  adjustments  and  carry  on 
the  further  activities  called  for  by  cir- 
cumstances. No  accident  ever  happens 
in  the  street,  no  excursion  or  outing  is 
ever  enjoyed,  no  fluctuation  of  supply  or 
demand  occurs  in  the  market,  no  unfore- 
seen exigency  arises  in  a  political  cam- 

18 


POWERS  OF  THE  STATE 

paign  that  does  not  reveal  to  us  these  dif- 
ferences of  reaction  among  our  fellow- 
beings. 

These  facts  are  simple  and  familiar,  but 
their  import  is  tremendous.  For  the  few 
who  react  systematically  and  persistently 
to  new  situations  as  they  arise,  are  the 
nucleus,  in  human  society,  of  a  ruUng 
group  or  class. 

It  has  been  my  habit  in  my  lectures  on 
"Social  Evolution"  to  call  this  dynamic 
nuclear  group  a  "protocracy."  Every 
kleptocracy  of  brigands  or  conquerors, 
every  plutocracy,  every  aristocracy,  and 
every  democracy  begins  as  a  protocracy. 
It  comes  into  existence  and  begins  its 
career  as  a  httle  band  of  alert  and  capable 
persons  who  see  the  situation,  grasp  the 
opportunity,  and,  in  the  expressive  slang 
of  our  modern  competitive  Ufe,  "go  to  it" 
with  no  unnecessary  delay. 

We  now  have  arrived  at  the  first  in- 
duction, the  fundamental  principle  of 
political  science,  which  is,  namely:  The 
few  always  dominate.    Invariably  the  few 

19 


f 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

rule,  more  or  less  arbitrarily,  more  or  less 
drastically,  more  or  less  extensively.  De- 
mocracy, even  the  most  radical  democ- 
racy, is  only  that  state  of  poUtically  or- 
ganized mankind  in  which  the  rule  of  the 
few  is  least  arbitrary  and  most  responsi- 
ble, least  drastic  and  most  considerate. 

But  how,  it  is  proper  at  this  point  to 
inquire,  does  protocracy  achieve  dominat- 
ing influence  and  power,  aijd  how  does  it 
estabUsh  its  rule?  How  does  it  make  itself 
a  kleptocracy,  or  a  plutocracy,  or  an  aris- 
tocracy.^ And  how,  at  length,  is  its  power 
limited  and  conditioned  by  the  many,  who 
thereby  estabUsh  democracy.^ 

Again  we  must  begin  with  pluraUstic 
behavior.  When  the  few  react  to  a  new 
situation  more  systematically  and  ade- 
quately than  the  many  do,  the  few  thereby 
create  yet  another  new  situation,  and  it  is 
one  to  which  the  many  must  adapt  them- 
selves as  best  they  can.  The  action  of  the 
few  is  approved  by  numerous  individuals 
who  could  not  or  did  not  initiate,  but  who 

SO 


POWERS  OF  THE  STATE 

are  wilHng  to  cooperate  under  direction 
and  encouragement.  If  the  enterprise  suc- 
ceeds, the  ranks  of  these  followers  who  aid 
and  abet,  but  who  never  take  responsibil- 
ity, are  rapidly  filled,  and  from  that  mo- 
ment the  indifferent  and  the  recalcitrant, 
the  men  on  the  side  Unes,  and  the  objec- 
tors, have  to  conform  to  the  ways  and 
purposes  of  a  going  concern. 

The  history  of  American  entrance  into 
the  European  war  affords  us  a  perfect  ex- 
ample of  these  phenomena.  From  the  first 
day  of  August,  1914,  there  were  men  in 
the  United  States  who  saw  the  situation 
as  it  was.  They  understood  the  issues  of  a 
conflict  that  would  menace  civiUzation. 
They  knew  that,  however  long  delayed, 
the  day  would  come  when,  in  aid  of 
France  and  of  Great  Britain,  and  in  de- 
fense of  the  responsible  state,  we  should 
have  to  make  our  sacrifices  and  take  our 
part,  or  be  forever  disgraced  as  a  craven 
people.  It  was  a  stubborn  fight  that 
those  men  then  began,  to  persuade  a  pub- 
lic that  did  not  clearly  see,  to  arouse  a 

91 


nil 


tli 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

people  wedded  to  prosperity,  and  to  con- 
vince a  government  loath  to  break  with 
our  traditions  of  aloofness  from  European 
quarrels.  Those  men  did  not  admit  that 
they  were  under  any  obhgation,  moral  or 
legal,  to  remain  *'  impartial  in  thought." 
They  did  not  beheve  that  descendants 
of  Revolutionary  soldiers  and  sons  of 
Civil  War  veterans  really  were  "too  proud 
to  fight."  " Peace  without  victory"  did 
not  allure  them,  and  they  repudiated  the 
proposition  that  with  the  "causes"  and 
the  "objects"  of  this  war  we  were  "not 
concerned."  They  did  not  have  a  pleas- 
ant time,  those  men  of  1914  and  1915, 
but  they  held  their  ground,  and  they  made 
their  way.  They  won  increasingly  re- 
spectful attention,  throughout  the  nation 
and  at  Washington.  And  when  at  length 
the  hour  came  that  choice  had  to  be  made 
between  declaring  war  and  surrendering 
our  sovereignty  to  the  Imperial  German 
Government,  it  was  an  imdivided  nation 
that  gave  momentous  decision.  The  re- 
spected author   himself  of  the  phrases 

22 


POWERS  OF  THE  STATE 

that  I  have  reluctantly  quoted  because 
they  are  an  essential  and  indelible  part  of 
the  record,  atoned  then  for  them,  by  warn- 
ing the  Imperial  German  Sovereign  that 
we  now  should  devote  our  last  dollar  and 
our  last  life,  if  necessary,  to  the  righteous 
task  of  destroying  him. 

Out  of  the  deference,  the  complaisance, 
and  the  voluntary  cooperation  of  the 
many,  the  few  build  up  their  own  ascend- 
ancy and  achieve  domination.  By  quite 
other  means  they  estabUsh  their  rule. 

Because  they  are  the  first  to  react  in  a 
systematic  and  adequate  way  to  new  sit- 
uations that  arise,  the  few  are  in  a  posi- 
tion to  take  quick  advantage  of  new  op- 
portimities,  economic  or  poUtical,  and 
history  has  not  recorded  reluctance  on 
their  part.  It  has  been  easier  for  them 
than  for  the  many  to  grasp  power,  and 
easier  for  them  than  for  the  many  to  get 
rich.  Expending  neither  more  nor  less 
foresight  and  energy  than  other  men  ex- 
pend, the  man  advantageously  placed  can 
get  more  wealth  and  more  power  of  other 

23 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

kinds  than  the  man  not  advantageously 
placed.  In  turbulent  times,  and  among 
lawless  men,  he  pursues  his  advantage 
without  scruple.  He  conquers  and  loots. 
In  days  of  peace,  and  among  law-abiding 
men,  he  keeps,  if  he  is  wise,  within  the  law, 
and,  if  perchance  he  is  a  good  man,  within 
the  limits  imposed  by  moral  law. 

Scrupulous  or  unscrupulous,  he  is  in  a 
position  to  bestow  or  to  withhold  favors. 
To  other  men  he  can  open  or  close  the 
gates  of  opportunity,  and  those  to  whom 
he  opens  them,  in  return  of  gratitude  can 
serve  him  in  divers  ways  as  opportunity 
oflFers.  There  springs  up  about  him,  there- 
fore, an  ever-enlarging  group  of  benefi- 
ciaries, eager  to  take  and  to  execute  his 
orders.  If  he  is  a  successful  miUtary  ad- 
venturer, he  divides  among  his  followers 
lands  riven  from  the  conquered,  as  Wil- 
liam of  Normandy  apportioned  the  earl- 
doms of  England  among  the  men  that 
fought  with  him  at  Senlac.  If  he  is  only 
the  poUtical  boss  of  a  democracy,  he  dis- 
tributes offices  and  franchises.  If  he  is  a 


POWERS  OF  THE  STATE 

statesman,  he  broadens  justice  and  redis- 
tributes pubUc  burdens.  Whatever  his 
relative  greatness,  if  his  station  and  its 
perquisites  be  ever  so  Uttle  greater  than 
those  held  and  enjoyed  by  other  men,  he 
can  protect  other  men  and  advance  them, 
or  he  can  throw  them  over  and  break  them 
down.  Herein  lies  the  crude,  relentless 
power,  wherewith  he  can  rule,  and  does 
rule,  in  distinction  from  the  intellectual 
and  moral  ascendancy  through  which  he 
dominates. 

All  actual  rule  of  man  by  man  which 
falls  short  of  the  despotism  or  the  slavery 
instituted  by  physical  force,  all  rule,  that 
is  to  say,  in  which  there  is  a  coefficient  of 
consent  on  the  part  of  the  ruled,  is  resolv- 
able into  the  relation  of  patron  and  bene- 
ficiary, of  protector  and  protected,  of  of- 
fice-bestower  and  office-holder,  or  some 
other  form  of  that  protean  relationship 
between  man  and  "his  man"  which  in 
feudal  days  was  understood  to  consist  in 
the  beneficium  and  the  commendatio. 

Actual  day-by-day  rule  over  a  politi- 


I 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

cally  organized  community  by  a  domi- 
nant person  or  group  is  political  gov- 
ernment, and  according  as  this  rule  is 
arbitrary  or  responsible,  vigorous  or  weak, 
efficient  or  incompetent,  government  as- 
sumes one  or  another  of  the  various  forms 
with  which  history  acquaints  us,  and  with 
which  we  are  familiar  in  current  poUtical 
discussion.  The  extremes  are  absolutism 
and  anarchy.  Between  these  extremes  are 
privileged  aristocracy,  bordering  upon 
absolutism,  and  radical  democracy  bor- 
dering upon  anarchy.  Between  privileged 
aristocracy  and  radical  democracy  is  a 
democratic  repubUcanism. 

Absolutism  is  the  arbitrary  rule  of  a 
monarch  or  of  a  miUtary  chieftain  who  has 
risen  above  competitors  and  subjected 
them  to  his  will.  The  rise  of  a  miUtary 
leader  to  poUtical  power  is  effected  through 
the  active  cooperation  of  practically  the 
entire  community.  In  the  stress  of  war  all 
other  desires  and  interests  sink  to  insignifi- 
cance by  comparison  with  the  issues  of  hfe 
and  death,  and  the  commander  who  can 

26 


POWERS  OF  THE  STATE 

make  an  enemy  fear  him  is  hailed  as  the 
savior  of  the  state.  So  long  as  he  succeeds, 
there  is  Uttle  disposition  to  call  his  acts  in 
question. 

Unless,  however,  he  was  born  a  king, 
the  miUtary  chieftain  never  can  become  a 
king  in  the  strict  meaning  of  the  word.  He 
may  become  an  emperor  as  Caesar  did,  or 
as  Napoleon  did.  His  children  may  be 
kings.  But  neither  Caesar  nor  Napoleon, 
great  as  their  prestige  was,  and  vast  as  was 
the  power  they  wielded,  was  truly  a  king. 

The  king  is  a  product,  not  of  the  tur- 
moil of  his  own  short  day  and  his  individ- 
ual success.  He  is  a  product  of  history. 
He  rules  in  divine  right,  and  to  that  right 
he  must  have  been  born.  The  right  itself 
came  into  existence  ages  upon  ages  ago. 

The  stuflf  and  essence  of  divine  right  is 
divine  power,  inherited  from  men  who 
themselves  were  embodiments  and  mani- 
festations of  it.  In  the  days  when  all  men 
beUeved  in  that  "mana"  or  sacred  virtue 
of  which  some  account  has  been  given,  the 
men  that  could  perform  mighty  deeds 


1 


ly 


m 


W 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

were  looked  upon  and  explained  as  per- 
sons full  of  sacred  and  superhuman  power. 
In  the  language  of  the  Greeks,  they  were 
**daimons,"  Uterally  "demoniacs,"  and 
other  men  feared  them.  They  ruled  not 
only  by  might,  but  also  with  authority. 
When  they  died  they  became  gods,  omnipo- 
tent and  omniscient  to  guide  and  to  help 
their  sons,  inheritors  of  their  divinity  and 
their  power.  Their  line  has  been  long,  but 
Gotterdammerung  at  last  has  fallen.  The 
sultan  and  the  czar  are  gone.  The  Kaiser 
only  yet  goes  forward  with  his  exclusive 

God. 

Absolutism  has  held  its  ground  through 
the  ages  because  mankind,  unenlightened, 
unemancipated  from  superstition,  driven 
often  to  desperation  by  impending  starva- 
tion, has  travailed  in  war.  Distracted  by 
war  it  has  looked  to  its  daimons  to  save 
society  from  anarchy  and  the  race  from 
death.  Anarchy  is  the  chaos  of  conspiring 
and  competing  protocracies,  none  of  which 
is  strong  enough  to  estabhsh  a  general 
rule.   It  is  the  breakdown  of  all  ordered 

9S 


POWERS  OF  THE  STATE 

and  disciplined  collective  effort.  It  is  that 
war  of  every  man  against  every  man,  to 
escape  from  which,  as  John  Hobbes  told 
us,  men  gladly  surrender  their  natural 
Uberties  and  individual  wills  to  a  sovereign 
competent  to  rule. 

Aristocracy  arises  in  one  of  three  ways. 
The  original  and  earUest  way  has  been 
described.  The  first  aristocrats  were  those 
tribesmen,  organized  in  clans  or  gentes^ 
who  founded  city-states  and  clung  tena- 
ciously to  their  gentile  organization,  to 
their  traditions  and  to  their  gods,  long 
after  they  had  admitted  immigrant  in- 
habitants to  work  and  trade  within  the 
walls  of  the  polis.  Aristocracy  of  a  dif- 
ferent kind  was  created  by  conquering 
chieftains  who  bestowed  lands  and  titles 
upon  their  more  efficient  and  most  loyal 
followers.  A  third  kind  of  aristocracy  is 
developed  from  plutocracy.  Inherited 
wealth  takes  on  graces  and  refinements, 
and  is  permitted  to  buy  titles  and  estates. 

Aristocracy  may  or  may  not  rule.  It 
cannot  rule  through  long  periods  of  stren- 

29 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

uous  war.  The  resolute  king,  the  military 
dictator,  the  strong  president,  or  the  com- 
mittee of  safety  governs  then.  In  days  of 
peace,  aristocracies  have  governed  success- 
fully and  wisely  for  a  time.  There  were 
good  historical  as  well  as  personal  and 
philosophical  reasons  for  Aristotle's  pref- 
erence for  aristocracy  as  potentially  the 
best  of  governmental  forms. 

As  in  days  of  violence,  anarchy  is  the 
extreme  alternative  to  absolutism,  so  in 
less  turbulent  times  the  extreme  alterna- 
tive to  plutocratic  or  aristocratic  rule  is 
found  in  radical  democracy. 

All  democracies,  radical  or  conservative, 
have  cast  oflF  historical  dominations.  They 
have  aboUshed  hereditary  distinctions 
and  continuing  rule  through  successive 
generations  by  royal  family  or  privileged 
class,  and  they  submit  themselves  only  to 
those  new  dominations  that  arise  from 
hour  to  hour,  to  be  overthrown  as  easily 
as  they  are  estabhshed.  Choosing  and 
deposing  their  governing  ministries  in  fre- 
quently recurring  elections,  they  attempt 

30 


POWERS  OF  THE  STATE 

to  level  inequalities  of  condition  and  of 
opportunity. 

Experiment  has  demonstrated  that  it  is 
possible  to  estabhsh  many  objective  equal- 
ities in  a  population  not  too  heterogeneous 
in  composition  and  fortunate  enough  to 
enjoy  prolonged  peace.  Adult  individuals 
may  be  made  poUtically  equal  by  allowing 
to  each  one  vote.  All  men  may  be  made 
equal  before  the  law.  Equal  educational 
opportunities  may  be  provided  and,  witlj 
approximate  equality,  the  burden  of  taxa- 
tion may  be  distributed. 

Radical  democracy  attempts  to  go  fur- 
ther. It  proclaims  the  justice  and  the  de- 
sirabiUty  of  economic  equality,  and  it  ex- 
periments with  socialistic  or  communistic 
policies.  By  conservative  minds  social- 
istic objectives  are  commonly  regarded 
as  the  most  radical  purposes  of  the  radical 
programme.  That  is  far  from  being  the 
fact,  and  the  error  is  a  dangerous  one.  The 
most  radical  idea  in  poUtics  is  an  assump- 
tion that  all  men,  having  been  endowed 
by  a  denaocratic  state  with  equal  power 

31 


\ 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

to  vote,  are  equally  competent  to  hold 
office  and  to  rule.  This  is  the  essence  of 
ultra-radicaUsm  under  all  its  forms.  It 
was  the  dogma  of  that  Jacksonian  cult  in 
the  United  States  which  glorified  a  shirt- 
sleeves democracy.  It  is  the  soul  of  Tam- 
manyism  in  our  great  cities.  It  is  the  shib- 
boleth of  the  Industrial  Workers  of  the 
World,  and  of  all  anarchistic  communists 
and  Bolsheviki.  Whether  admitting  it  in 
words  or  not,  radical  democracy  beheves 
as  strongly  in  subjective  as  in  objective 
equaUty.  It  attributes  to  diflFerences  of 
nurture  and  to  inequaUties  of  educational 
opportunity  the  undeniable  variability 
of  individual  efficiency  and  the  range  of 
behavior  from  brutaUty  or  treachery  to 
honorable  dealing  and  self-sacrifice.  It 
denies  that  through  biological  heredity 
some  men  are  by  nature  of  nobler  mould 
and  greater  ability  than  others. 

Civilization  is  fighting  for  its  hfe  to- 
day against  foes  without  and  foes  within. 
Warned  of  impending  doom  in  a  worid 
enlightened  and  free,  absolutism  and  di- 
ss 


POWERS  OF  THE  STATE 

vine  right,  Junkerism  and  miUtarism,  con- 
ceived the  mad  purpose  to  subjugate  and 
rule  the  earth.  Quick  to  take  advantage 
of  chaos  and  disaster,  anarchistic  democ- 
racy proclaims  that  the  social  revolution 
is  at  hand. 

Happily,  between  these  perils  the  or- 
ganized common  sense  of  civilization  is 
intrenched  and  armed.  Between  aristoc- 
racy bordering  on  absolutism  and  radical 
democracy  bordering  on  anarchy  exists  a 
democratic  republicanism  which  reason- 
ably well  exempUfies  the  principles  and 
fulfills  the  functions  of  that  mixed  govern- 
ment which  Aristotle  extolled  as  being  all 
in  all  the  best  practically  attainable  in  a 
concrete  historical  world  of  finite  men. 
In  the  history  of  philosophy  I  do  not  find 
a  more  wonderful  instance  of  clear  and 
penetrating  insight  than  this  judgment 
arrived  at  by  the  first  great  inductive 
student  of  poUtical  phenomena.  There 
were  not  many  examples  of  democratic 
repubUcanism,  with  or  without  an  admix- 
ture of  nominal  monarchy  or  harmless 

33 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

aristocracy,  two  thousand  years  ago,  and 
they  offered  but  sorry  resistance  to  im- 
perial ambitions.  Nor  did  they  flourish  in 
the  long  night  of  medisevalism,  nor  in  the 
strenuous  age  of  modern  nation-making. 
The  first  undoubtedly  successful  one, 
which  now  has  become  the  mightiest  one, 
was  founded  less  than  one  hundred  and 
fifty  years  ago.  Yet  in  that  short  time  it 
has  demonstrated  its  superiority  as  a  com- 
bination of  strength  and  adaptability  to 
all  other  organizations  of  poUtical  power. 
England  and  her  colonial  dominions, 
France,  Switzerland,  Italy,  and  the  na- 
tions of  South  America  have  adopted  it, 
not  always  in  form,  but  in  substance  and 
essential  features.  To  democratic  repub- 
hcanism  the  world  looks  to-day  to  save 
and  safeguard  the  priceless  values  of  civ- 
iUzation. 

Democratic  repubhcanism  at  its  best 
distributes  pohtical  power  with  a  close 
approximation  to  equaUty  among  adult 
citizens.  It  measurably  succeeds  in  estab- 
lishing even-handed  justice  in  the  courts 

S4 


POWERS  OF  THE  STATE 

of  law.  It  distributes  public  burdens  with 
a  wise  regard  to  abiUty  to  bear  them.  It 
provides  equal  educational  opportunities 
for  all.  It  strives  to  protect  the  health  and 
to  conserve  the  strength  of  the  popula- 
tion. Slowly  at  first,  but  in  the  long  run 
surely,  it  curbs  and  abolishes  privilege. 
It  may  go  far  —  how  far,  no  one  now  can 
predict  —  to  achieve  approximate  equal- 
ity of  economic  conditions. 

But  the  dogma  that  men  are  or  can  be 
subjectively  equal,  it  does  not  and  will  not 
concede.  It  takes  the  common-sense  posi- 
tion that  biologists  know  what  they  are 
talking  about  when  they  declare  that  by 
heredity  men  are  not  only  different,  but 
also  are  unequal,  anatomically,  physio- 
logically, and  psychologically.  It  no  more 
beheves  that  the  citizens  of  a  state  are 
equal  in  resourcefulness,  or  in  trustwor- 
thiness, or  in  constructive  genius  than  that 
they  are  equal  in  muscular  strength,  or  in 
swiftness  to  run,  or  in  health,  or  in  longev- 
ity. Acting  on  these  common-sense  con- 
victions democratic  republicanism  looks 

35 


if 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

about  for  men  of  exceptional  and  special- 
ized ability  to  perform  legislative,  admin- 
istrative, and  judicial  tasks.  It  ungrudg- 
ingly acknowledges  their  superiority  and 
listens  to  their  counsel.  It  puts  and  keeps 
them  in  positions  of  authority  and  power. 
As  the  clear-seeing  Harrington  in  '*  Oce- 
ana" demonstrated  that  it  should,  it  es- 
tablishes in  the  state  the  pohtical  rule  of 
"a  natural  aristocracy,"  and  under  that 
rule  it  builds  strongly  and  to  endure  the 
fabric  of  human  freedom. 

* 

Pohtical  power  is  the  dynamic  content 
of  sovereignty.  In  all  the  dictionaries 
there  is  no  other  word  than  this  noun 
** sovereignty"  that  has  more  disastrously 
been  conjured  with  by  the  metaphysical 
juggler.  I  shall  not  attempt  to  tell  its  his- 
tory. Centuries  ago  its  connotations  sub- 
merged its  denotations.  Jurists  and  poht- 
ical theorists,  losing  sight  of  concrete  fact, 
gave  their  minds  to  abstractions  and 
wasted  disquisition  upon  conceptual  dis- 
tinctions.   And   sovereignty  became  for 

S6 


POWERS  OF  THE  STATE 

pohtical  science  a  thing  that  never  was 
on  sea  or  land. 

In  every  state,  the  metaphysician 
argues,  there  "resides"  and  may  be  found 
a  power  to  which  individuals  yield  uncon- 
ditional obedience.  If  it  resides  in  a  per- 
son, the  state  has  "a"  sovereign.  If  it  re- 
sides in  a  class,  or  in  a  majority,  or  in  an 
assembly,  or  in  a  people,  that  class  or 
majority,  assembly,  or  people,  is  "the" 
sovereign.  Obeying  individuals  are  "sub- 
jects" of  sovereignty. 

So  far  the  metaphysician  is  on  fairly 
safe  ground,  yet  to  this  statement  of  his 
premise  one  exception  must  be  filed.  The 
morally  responsible  human  being  does  not 
yield  "unconditional"  obedience  to  any 
earthly  power.  Somewhere  there  is  a 
hue  that  he  cannot  cross.  He  shrinks  back 
from  it,  but,  if  driven  on,  he  side-steps  to 
the  block  or  the  gallows.  So  the  meta- 
physician adds  to  his  premise  the  saving 
clause, "  under  penalty  of  death  " ;  but  that 
clause,  as  we  shall  see  directly,  does  not 
help  his  case.   It  only  lands  him  in  another 

37 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

untruth,  namely,  that  sovereignty  is  an 
irresistible  power  to  "compel"  obedience. 

The  metaphysician  now  has  arrived  at 
a  conception,  and  relentlessly  he  elabo- 
rates its  impUcations.  Sovereignty  is 
"original";  no  antecedent  poUtical  power 
created  it.  It  is  "independent";  no  other 
poUtical  power  controls  it.  Within  the 
state  it  is  "  universal " :  no  subject  can  hide 
himself  from  it  or  in  any  act  of  his  Ufe  dis- 
regard it,  for,  being  a  power  to  compel, 
sovereignty  is  by  impUcation  "irresisti- 
ble." These  impUcations  suggest  others. 
As  St.  Paul  logically  remarked:  "But 
when  he  saith  all  things  are  put  under 
him,  it  is  manifest  that  he  is  excepted, 
which  did  put  all  things  under  him."  Sov- 
ereignty, therefore,  is  unconditioned.  It 
is  absolute.  It  is  the  source  and  creator  of 
rights  and  itself  the  judge  of  right. 

As  a  creation  of  the  "pure"  reason  the 
metaphysical  notion  of  sovereignty  is  very 
nearly  a  masterpiece,  and  the  Kantian 
intellect,  unfortunately,  has  taken  it  seri- 
ously. 

38 


POWERS  OF  THE  STATE 

Let  us,  however,  plant  our  feet  upon  the 
ground  and  look  about  us.  What  personal 
sovereign,  ruUng  despotically,  ever  ad- 
mitted that  his  sovereignty  was  "origi- 
nal"? What  one  has  not  vehemently  de- 
rived his  power  and  his  authority  from 
God.'*  And  where  has  a  sovereign's  rule 
within  his  own  state  been  universal.^  What 
significance,  if  any,  attaches  to  that  dear 
old  tale  of  the  sword  that  hung  by  a  hair 
over  the  head  of  Damocles,  or  to  the  dread 
words  written  at  Babylon  the  night  that 
Belshazzar,  King  of  the  Chaldeans,  was 
slain:  "Mene,  mene,  tekel  upharsin"; 
"God  hath  numbered  thy  kingdom  and 
finished  it"?  Monarchs  there  have  been 
who  could  ride  down  any  individual  antag- 
onist. WilUam  of  Normandy  is  said  to 
have  been  formidable;  but  what  monarch 
ever  rode  down  an  army  or  a  mob?  Backed 
by  men  who  superstitiously  beUeve  in  his 
divinity,  or  who  repose  confidence  in  his 
personal  quaUties,  and  who  profit  through 
their  relationship  to  him,  the  personal 
sovereign  can  compel  obedience  within 

89 


rt 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

limits,  here  and  there,  and  now  and  then. 
Beyond  this  he  only  commands  obedience. 
That  is  to  say,  he  demands  and  gets  obedi- 
ence, although  he  could  not,  if  he  tried, 
compel  it.  He  gets  it,  more  or  less  will- 
ingly rendered,  so  long  as  his  subjects  rev- 
erently, or  calculatingly,  beUeve  in  him 
and  feel  that  on  the  whole  they  profit  by 
his  rule. 

When  we  turn  from  the  consideration 
of  personal  sovereignty  to  an  examination 
of  class  or  mass  sovereignty,  we  find  that 
the  facts  are  not  greatly  different.  A  class, 
a  majority,  a  committee,  or  a  mob  can 
compel  a  Umited  obedience,  here  and 
there,  now  and  then.  An  aristocracy  long 
estabUshed  and  owning  land,  or  a  capitaUst 
class,  controlUng  modern  means  of  pro- 
duction, can  exact  an  enormous  volume  of 
obedience,  which  it  could  not  actually 
compel  if  resistance  were  offered.  In  a 
psychological  sense,  a  popular  majority 
may  compel  a  large  measure  of  obedience 
for  a  time,  through  the  sheer  impressive- 
ness  of  numbers,  and  the  potentiaUties  of 

40 


POWERS  OF  THE  STATE 

superior  physical  force.  And  finally  an 
organized  people,  through  the  evolution 
of  common  sentiments  and  of  pubUc  opin- 
ion, evokes  obedience.  It  calls  it  forth 
through  the  play  of  moral  soUdarity  upon 
the  individual  mind.  Here  and  there,  now 
and  then,  it  compels,  but  that  is  not  its 
characteristic  or  normal  procedure. 

Study  of  the  circumstances  under  which 
governments  become  arbitrary  or  become 
responsible  yields  further  cause  for  sus- 
picion that  the  metaphysical  notion  of 
sovereignty  will  not  bear  too  close  exam- 
ination. In  technical  distinction  from  the 
state,  governments  are  the  agencies  or 
organs  through  which  sovereigns  rule. 
Nevertheless,  government  itself,  regarded 
as  an  operation  or  process,  is  a  sovereign's 
activity. 

When  actual  social  conditions  approxi- 
mate the  hypothetical  war  of  every  man 
against  every  man,  only  the  iron  hand 
can  establish  social  order.  In  our  own  day 
this  condition  has  been  exemplified  tragi- 
cally in  Mexico.  A  heterogeneous  popula- 

41 


I 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

tion,  Ignorant  and  superstitious,  unable 
to  create  a  state  through  a  meeting  of 
minds,  was  held  together  for  a  time  by  the 
strong  rule  of  Diaz.  Boss  rule  in  oiu-  cities 
is  a  product  of  substantially  similar  con- 
ditions. Where  they  exist  the  hypothesis 
upon  which  Hobbes  erected  his  poUtical 
system  holds  good.  Then,  without  im- 
posing conditions,  men  surrender  their 
wills  and  entrust  their  fate  to  a  sover- 
eign powerful  enough  to  hold  them  in 
order. 

The  mistake  that  Hobbes  made  was  in 
assuming  that  the  state  of  nature  is  al- 
ways so  desperate.  John  Locke  made  the 
opposite  mistake  of  assimiing  that  it  al- 
ways is  a  condition  of  mutual  toleration 
and  spontaneous  cooperation.  It  may, 
however,  be  very  nearly  such,  and  when 
it  is,  men  do  not  surrender  self-govern- 
ment to  an  instituted  sovereign,  or  to 
a  sovereign  self-imposed.  They  delegate 
governing  powers  conditionally,  retaining 
the  right  from  time  to  time  to  Umit  them 
further  and,  if  they  choose,  to  depose  the 


POWERS  OF  THE  STATE 

government  exercising  them.  They  may 
continue  to  Uve  under  a  monarch,  but  his 
rule  is  hmited  and  made  constitutional. 
It  is,  however,  —  let  us  never  forget,  — 
only  a  relatively  homogeneous,  intelli- 
gent, and  instructed  population  that  be- 
haves in  this  fashion. 

Like  a  personal  sovereign  a  majority 
may  rule  arbitrarily  or  rule  responsibly. 
Arbitrary  majority  rule,  as  Rousseau  per- 
ceived, is  a  product  of  oppression,  to  es- 
cape from  which  men  merge  their  individ- 
ual wills  in  a  common  will.  The  history 
of  trade-unionism  is  perhaps  the  most 
illuminating  case  of  untrammeled  majority 
rule.  As,  in  the  covenanted  state  conceived 
by  Hobbes,  an  anarchist  is  one  who  elects 
to  remain  in  a  state  of  nature  which  is  a 
state  of  war,  and,  therefore,  may  not  ra- 
tionally complain  if  the  state  makes  war 
upon  him,  so,  in  a  community  divided 
into  exploiters  and  exploited,  the  "scab" 
is  one  who  elects  to  remain  under  oppres- 
sion and,  therefore,  may  not  reasonably 
complain  if  an  organized  majority,  pro- 

4S 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

voked  to  revolt  and  fighting  for  liberty 
and  amelioration,  oppresses  him. 

Over  against  this  or  any  other  justifica- 
tion of  imconditional  majority  rule,  stands 
the  contention  of  the  great  founders  of 
our  American  poUtical  system.  Majority 
despotism,  they  protested,  — and  their  ar- 
gument is  perhaps  most  clearly  set  forth 
in  the  writings  of  Samuel  Adams  and  of 
Thomas  Paine,  —  is  not  more  tolerable 
than  the  despotism  of  a  king.  Therefore, 
broadly  general  and  imdefined  govern- 
ing powers  should  never  be  delegated. 
Governments  should  exercise  only  spe- 
cific powers,  expressly  conferred  and  care- 
fully defined,  and  these,  for  the  further 
protection  of  minorities  and  individuals, 
should  be  conditioned  by  checks  and  bal- 
ances. What  the  founders  of  our  Repubhc 
and  the  Constitution  builders  who  suc- 
ceeded them  did  not  clearly  see,  or,  at  any 
rate,  did  not  fully  reaUze,  was  the  fact 
that,  just  as  a  people  must  be  homogene- 
ous and  enhghtened  before  it  can  impose 
constitutional  Umitations  upon  personal 

44 


POWERS  OF  THE  STATE 

sovereignty,  so  must  it  be  free  and  demo- 
cratic before  it  can  impose  restrictions 
upon  majority  rule. 

If  the  foregoing  criticism  of  the  meta- 
physical notion  of  sovereignty  is  vahd 
and  of  consequence,  it  appears  that  actual 
sovereignty  and  actual  government  are 
phenomena  determined  by  conditions  that 
have  more  adequately  been  studied  and 
perhaps  are  better  understood  by  the 
sociologist  than  by  the  a-priori  poUtical 
theorist.  A  population  at  peace  with  its 
neighbors,  relatively  homogeneous  in  its 
composition,  enhghtened,  not  exploited 
by  a  privileged  class,  delegates  governing 
powers  to  parhaments  and  ministries,  or 
to  congresses  and  presidents,  but  does 
not  merge  all  individual  wills  in  a  collec-  / 
tive  will  or  surrender  itself  to  an  insti- 
tuted sovereign.  When,  however,  op- 
pression exists,  there  is  sooner  or  later  a 
subordination  of  individuals  and  minori- 
ties to  a  majority  arrayed  against  the  op- 
pressors. If  a  population,  not  homogene- 
ous, is  or  becomes  too  miscellaneous  for 

45 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

cooperation,  restrictions  upon  authority, 
if  any  have  existed,  are  broken  down  and 
there  is  a  concentration  of  extraordinary 
powers  in  the  hands  of  strong  men.  And 
if  at  any  time,  in  any  state,  heterogene- 
ous or  homogeneous,  ignorant  or  enUght- 
ened,  war  supervenes,  personal  hberty 
goes  by  the  board  and  arbitrary  govern- 
ment is  accepted  as  a  thing  inevitable  and 
of  course. 

Yet  never  in  practice,  never  in  the  con- 
crete world  of  Uving  men,  does  sover- 
eignty become  that  absolute  power  and 
authority  which  metaphysical  theorizing 
has  conceived  it  to  be.  Taking  words  at 
their  face  value,  nothing  corresponding  to 
the  textbook  definitions  of  sovereignty 
exists  or  ever  has  existed  in  the  world. 
The  state  itself  is  not  absolute.  Only 
Treitschkes  and  Kaisers  so  think  of  it. 
Like  everything  else  concrete  and  actual, 
it  is  a  phenomenon  of  relativity.  It  is  con- 
ditioned by  reaUties  beyond  and  wider 
than  itself.  It  is  subject  to  cosmic  Umi- 
tations,  and    sovereignty  cannot    tran- 

46 


POWERS  OF  THE  STATE 

scend  the  laws  of  an  orderly  and  ordering 
imiverse.  Nor  can  it  transcend  the  limi- 
tations imposed  by  the  circumstance  that 
mankind  is  pohtically  organized  in  many 
nations,  and  that  no  nation  can  safely  rim 
amuck  among  its  neighbors.  Sovereignty, 
therefore,  is  subject,  as  the  signers  of  our 
Declaration  acknowledge,  to  "a  decent 
respect  to  the  opinions  of  mankind." 
Moroever,  it  is  subject  further  to  limita- 
tions imposed  by  the  human  nature  of  its 
own  subjects.  Not  only  in  democracies, 
but  everywhere  and  always,  rulers  and 
ruUng  groups  exist  by  the  consent  of  the « 
many.  Finally,  Uke  every  intellectual 
being  the  sovereign  is  subject,  as  Greek 
and  Roman  saw,  to  the  rule  of  reason;  and 
Uke  every  ethical  being  it  is  morally  re- 
sponsible to  the  intelUgent  conscience  of 
all  mankind,  now  Uving  and  hereafter  to 
Uve. 

Sovereignty,    accordingly,    is    not,    itj 
never  was,  it  never  can  be,  "an  original, 
unconditioned,  universal,  and  irresistible 
power  to  compel  obedience."  Neverthe- 

47 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

less,  it  is  something  very  real  and  very 
great,  for  in  all  its  forms  and  expressions 
it  is  —  and  in  these  words  we  may  define 
it  —  the  dominant  human  power y  individ- 
^ual  or  pluralistic y  in  a  politically  organized 
and  politically  independent  population. 

And  the  state,  the  mightiest  creation 
of  the  himian  mind,  is  also  the  noblest 
expression  of  human  purpose..  Were  it, 
however,  absolute,  it  would  defeat  all  pur- 
pose. Finite  and  relative  it  is,  of  neces- 
sity. To  fulfill  its  destiny  it  must  hold 
itself  responsible.      ~  '  ('. 


%,' 


f 


*■ 


^ 


m 

RIGHTS  OF  THE  STATE 

The  story  is  told  that  a  distinguished 
jurist,  long  on  the  supreme  bench  of  his 
state,  warned  his  son,  lately  admitted  to 
the  bar,  not  to  suppose  that  the  primary 
purpose  of  the  law  is  to  render  justice.  The 
first  business  of  the  law,  he  said,  is  to  set- 
tle disputes. 

The  thought  is  not  new.  Indeed,  it  is 
older  than  the  law  itself;  for  adjudication 
was  invented  to  terminate  quarrels  sub- 
versive of  social  order.  For  unnumbered 
generations  it  was  appUed  to  put  a  stop  to 
clan  vengeance  and  private  feuds. 

Admitting  that  the  aphorism  quoted  is 
crudely  true,  the  common  sense  of  man- 
kind accepts  it  with  reservations.  Justice 
is  one  of  the  matters  that  common  sense 
jealously  cares  about.  The  plain  man  is 
sure  that  he  knows  what  justice  is  and 
cannot  understand  why  philosophy  and 

49 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

jurisprudence  find  difficulty  in  defining  it. 
He  holds  that  it  is  the  basis  of  endur- 
able and  so  of  enduring,  social  relations, 
and  he  insists,  therefore,  that  a  dispute 
is  not  settled  really  until  it  is  settled 

justly. 

The  state  makes  law,  and,  as  the  phrase 
goes,  it  "administers"  justice.  Does  the 
state,  then,  create  justice?  Or,  is  justice  of 
independent  origin  and  prior  to  the  state, 
and  its  moral  foundation? 

The  question  is  one  on  which  wise  men 
have  differed.  A  third  hypothesis  may  be 
entertained.  Are  justice  and  the  state  pos- 
sibly identical,  and  coeval? 

The  first  broadly  philosophical  discus- 
sion of  the  subject  we  find  in  Plato:  in  the 
incomparable  "Republic."  Plato  did  not 
think  of  justice  in  terms  of  equivalence. 
It  was  neither  an  eye  for  an  eye  and  a 
tooth  for  a  tooth,  nor  yet  a  mere  rendering 
of  equal  values  in  the  market-place.  As 
Plato  conceived  it,  justice  is  adjustment; 
and  not  so  much  an  adjustment  of  per- 
sonal claims,  and  thereby  a  settling  of  dis- 

50 


RIGHTS  OF  THE  STATE 

putes,  as  an  adjustment  of  social  services, 
to  the  end  that  all  men  may  Uve  the  good 
Ufe. 

Men  differ,  he  observed,  in  aptitudes 
and  in  abilities.  There  are  wise  men,  com- 
petent to  govern.  There  are  brave  men, 
qualified  to  be  soldiers.  There  are  skillful 
men  fit  to  be  craftsmen,  hardy  men  fit  to 
go  forth  in  ships,  and  sturdy  men  fit  to  till 
the  soil.  K  every  man,  then,  does  that 
which  he  can  do  best,  all  profit,  and  the 
community  prospers.  The  division  of 
labor  assures  economic  gain. 

It  assures,  also,  something  more;  shall 
we  say  something  higher,  or  nobler?  Plato 
discovered  in  speciahzation  ethical  values 
which  Adam  Smith,  if  he  rediscovered 
them,  did  not  attempt  to  analyze.  In  do- 
ing what  he  can  do  well,  the  normal  hu- 
man being  finds  rational  satisfaction.  He 
Uves  sincerely.  He  is  conscious  of  power, 
and  of  worth.  He  strives,  he  thinks  and 
plans,  he  becomes  right-minded.  So  liv- 
ing, he  attains  and  follows  the  good  life, 
which,  as  Plato  saw  it,  consists  of  actions 

51 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

and  satisfactions  that  reason,  reviewing 
and  pondering,  approves  of. 

It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  Plato  here 
anticipates  our  best  educational  psychol- 
ogy. He  anticipates,  also,  our  educational 
sociology.  Only  organized  society  can 
put  the  square  pegs  in  the  square  holes 
and  the  round  pegs  in  the  round  holes. 
Therefore,  only  in  organized  society  are 
justice,  true  education,  and  the  good  hfe 
possible.  The  community  which  makes 
social  adjustments  by  assigning  to  citizens 
different  functions  according  to  their  sev- 
eral aptitudes  and  abilities,  so  inviting  and 
committing  them  to  the  good  hfe,  is  the 
republic,  an  ideal  state. 

In  one  detail  only  did  Plato  fail  to  see 
the  problem  whole.  His  repubUc  is  a 
static  state.  If  the  adjustments  that  he 
contemplated  could  once  be  made,  an 
equilibrium  of  moral  forces  would  be 
established  which  no  one  would  wish  to 
disturb.  The  interests  of  individuals 
would  balance  one  another,  and  the  in- 
terests of  citizens,  regarded  as  individuals, 

52 


RIGHTS  OF  THE  STATE 

would  balance  the  interests  of  the  com- 
munity, regarded  as  an  entity.  The  state 
would  be  perfect,  and  its  individual  mem- 
bers as  nearly  perfect  as  man  can  be.  Con- 
tinuing progress  toward  an  unattained 
goal  would  no  longer  occupy  attention. 
Plato  had  seen  governments  rise  and  fall, 
but  the  processes  of  poUtical  change  did 
not  greatly  interest  him,  and  he  made  no 
attempt  to  explain  how,  within  the  rhythms 
of  war  and  peace  and  under  the  ebb 
and  flow  of  tides  of  human  migration,  the 
ideal  republic  could  be  brought  to  pass. 
He  does,  indeed,  in  the  "Laws,"  give  us 
a  masterful  analysis  of  actual  social 
forces;  but  nowhere  does  he  undertake 
to  show  that  a  long  enduring  state  may 
at  one  time  assume  one  character,  and  at 
another  time  another  character.  Of  course, 
therefore,  he  does  not  try  to  set  forth  the 
causes  that  effect  transformation. 

Aristotle  did  try,  but  he  did  not  get 
beyond  a  theory  of  cycles.  Monarchy  he 
thought  tends  to  become  the  repubhc,  the 
republic  tends  to  become  democracy,  de- 

53 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

mocracy  tends  to  become  tyranny,  and  so 
round  and  round.  Until  Herbert  Spencer 
gave  us  his  generalization  of  the  antithesis 
of  militarism  to  industriaUsm,  no  student 
of  politics  had  ever  seen  exactly  how  shift- 
ing circumstantial  pressures  make  the  so- 
cial type  regimental  or  contractual,  make 
governments  despotic  or  representative, 
and  stamp  out  Uberty  or  estabUsh  and 
broaden  it.  Increasing  circimistantial 
pressures,  the  resistless  pressures  of  war, 
above  all,  standardize  behavior,  unify  in- 
terests, and  consolidate  power.  While  they 
last  they  nearly  destroy  the  kind  of  justice 
that  Plato  described:  but  when  peace  re- 
turns coercive  pressures  diminish,  Uberty 
is  reasserted,  behavior  tends  to  become 
spontaneous,  men  freely  differ  from  one 
another,  variant  types  of  individuahty  are 
tolerated,  finer  and  yet  finer  adjustments 
are  made,  and  the  state  approximates  the 
ideal  republic  of  Plato's  dream. 

In  these  generalizations  there  Ues  a 
vital  impUcation  as  to  justice  conceived 
as  adjustment.    In  the  enduring  state, 

54 


RIGHTS  OF  THE  STATE 

now  at  war,  and  now  at  peace,  adjust- 
ments cannot  be  made  once  for  all.  Noth- 
ing is  or  can  remain  static.   A  "moving 
equiUbrium"  is  the  nearest  possible  ap- 
proach to  order.   Conformity  and  Uberty 
themselves,  now  more  of  one,  now  more 
of  the  other,  are  subject  to  never-ending 
readjustment.  If  justice  is,  indeed,  adjust- 
ment,  in   the  Platonic  sense,  then  the 
necessary  adaptations  of  conformity  and 
Uberty  one  to  the  other,  of  standardized 
social  requirement  and  individual  varia-  ' 
biUty  one  to  another,  are  the  supreme 
justice.     But    it   is   a   justice   infinitely 
difficult  to  attain. 

Plato  lived  when  law,  as  we  moderns 
know  it,  hardly  existed.  The  Hammurabi 
Code  is  evidence  that  the  Romans,  the 
first  reaUy  great  law-makers,  had  some- 
thing to  build  on,  as  the  English  and  the 
Americans,  the  great  modern  law-makers, 
have  had  Roman  law  to  build  on;  yet 
law  on  the  whole  is  Western  and  modern. 
Its  development  in  the  West  has  been  a 
great   intellectual  enterprise   which  has 

55 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

absorbed  the  thought  of  exceptionally  able 
men. 

In  this  fact  we  find  an  explanation,  I 
think,  of  the  singular  difference  between 
our  modern  approach  to  the  problem  of 
justice,  and  that  which  was  made  by 
Plato  and  later  Greek  and  Roman  writers 
down  to  Cicero.  Unless  we  happen  to  be 
steeped  in  classical  philosophy,  or  have 
become  interested  in  justice  through  eco- 
nomics or  biology,  we  approach  it  through 
an  exanunation  of  juristic  rights  and  their 
relations  to  that  right  or  rightness  which 
conscience  apprehends,  and  the  moral 
judgment  of  mankind  proclaims. 

A  right,  in  distinction  from  the  right,  or 
that  which  is  right,  is  a  claim  or  an  im- 
munity or  a  Uberty,  that  is  not  only  as- 
serted by  an  individual  or  by  a  group,  but 
that  also  (and  this  is  the  important  mat- 
ter) is  allowed  and  confirmed  by  othei  in- 
dividuals and  other  groups.  It  is  frankly 
and  wholly  objective.  A  juristic  right, 
accordingly,  is  a  claim,  an  immunity,  or 
a  Uberty  that  is  created  or  allowed,  con- 

56 


' 


RIGHTS  OF  THE  STATE 

firmed,  and  enforced  by  a  state.  To  minds 
that  think  clearly  without  too  exhausting 
effort,  it  is  suflSciently  plain  that  a  juristic 
right  may  or  may  not  be  right.  It  may 
embody  and  express  rightness  or  wicked- 
ness. Rights  sturdily  upheld  by  one  gen- 
eration may  be  branded  infamous  by  an- 
other. It  was  only  two  generations  ago 
that  property  in  a  slave  was  a  juristic 
right  upheld  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States. 

Looking  over  the  moral  and  legal  his- 
tory of  Western  civihzation  through  four 
or  five  centuries  past,  we  discover  oc- 
casional brief  periods  in  which  juristic 
rights  seem  to  have  parted  company  with 
moral  right,  and  other,  longer  periods,  in 
which  there  has  been  earnest  striving  to 
identify  state-made  law  with  popular 
moral  judgment.  On  the  whole  a  great 
advance  has  been  made  in  morally  rectify- 
ing juristic  right.  Progress  in  this  direc- 
tion has  not  been  Umited  to  municipal 
law.  It  was  conspicuous  in  the  growth  of 
that  important  body  of  rules  called  inter- 

57 


\n 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

national  law,  or  the  law  of  nations,  which, 
until  it  was  flaunted  by  the  German  in- 
vasion of  Belgium  and  by  subsequent  acts 
of  faithlessness,  we  had  dared  to  hope  had 
limited  the  possibilities  of  war  and  for  all 
time  mitigated  its  horrors.  Confident  that 
the  law  of  nations  will  be  reestabUshed 
broadly  and  strongly  when  peace  returns, 
I  venture  to  think  that  in  the  approxi- 
mation of  juristic  rights  to  moral  re- 
quirements we  find  the  most  convincing 
proof  of  moral,  in  distinction  from  a 
merely  material  or  economic,  progress. 
Mankind  does  become  better,  as  well  as 
richer  and  more  comfortable,  as  the  ages 

pass. 

The  various  aspects  of  right  have  not, 
however,  received  equal  attention  in  any 
generation,  and  from  time  to  time  interest 
has  shifted  from  one  to  another  phase. 
Yet  one  exception  to  inconstancy  there 
has  been  and  is.  Since  the  democratic 
movement  began  there  has  been  a  pro- 
gressively insistent  demand  that  funda- 
mental rights  of  life,  liberty,  and  oppor- 

58 


RIGHTS  OF  THE  STATE 

tunity  shall  be  secured  equally  to  all  men. 
Privilege  is  declared  to  be  unrighteous, 
and  is  denounced  as  unjust  because  in- 
equitable. Here  we  arrive  at  the  modern 
conception  of  justice.  It  is  derived  from 
an  examination  of  rights  and  their  dis- 
tribution. A  majority  of  men  now  Hving 
in  the  democratic  nations  hold  that  jus- 
tice consists  in  an  equal  possession  and 
enjoyment  of  fundamental  rights. 

Plato,  I  suppose,  could  easily  have  rec- 
onciled this  conception  of  justice  with  his 
own.  To  secure  to  every  man  opportunity 
to  render  his  best  service  to  the  commu- 
nity and  thereby  most  fully  to  develop  his 
own  powers,  Plato  might  well  have  said  is 
the  most  effective  way  to  equalize  rights 
among  citizens. 

In  the  struggle  to  make  law  ethical,  ap- 
peal has  over  and  over  again  been  made, 
as  it  was  made  in  the  American  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  to  an  alleged  prior- 
ity and  independent  existence  of  so-called 
"natural  rights."  To  the  legalistic  mind 

S9 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

the  term  is  objectionable.  It  seems  to 
confound  rights  with  right.  Admitting 
that  the  morally  right  may  be  prior  to 
positive  law  and  have  an  independent  au- 
thority of  its  own,  the  lawyer  is  disposed 
to  hold  that,  strictly  speaking,  there  are 
no  objective  rights  other  than  the  juristic 
rights  created  by  the  state.  German  po- 
litical and  juristic  philosophy  in  recent 
years  has  boldly  gone  further  and  aflBrmed 
that  the  state  is  the  source  and  creator  of 
moral,  no  less  than  of  juristic,  right.  The 
argument  in  form  is  tortuous,  as  becomes 
Teutonic  thinking,  but  essentially  it  is 
simple.  Our  ideas  of  right,  it  asserts,  are 
derived  in  part  from  the  data,  the  pro- 
cedures, and  the  discriminations  of  ad- 
judication, and  in  part  from  the  struggles 
of  states  to  hold  their  own  against  ene- 
mies and  to  make  for  themselves  a  place 
in  the  sun.  The  state,  therefore,  truly 
creates  these  ideas,  it  interprets  and  ap- 
pUes  them,  and  is  the  final  judge  of  their 
vaUdity.  Upon  this  argument  is  built  the 
further  and  monstrous  contention  that  the 

60 


RIGHTS  OF  THE  STATE 

state  is  morally  absolute  and  can  do  no 

wrong. 

There  is,  nevertheless,  in  the  Teutonic 
view  a  modicum  of  truth,  and  it  is  the  ele- 
ment of  truth  that  makes  it  dangerous. 
For  this  reason  it  is  imperative  that  in 
justification  of  our  theory  of  the  respon- 
sible state  we  should  reexamine  the  doc- 
trine of  natural  rights. 

It  is  true,  then,  that  in  the  evolution  of 
himian  intelUgence,  ideas  of  right  and 
wrong  have  been  suggested  and  shaped  by 
actual  cases  of  alleged  wrong-doing  and 
by  countless  trial  and  error  attempts  to 
punish  or  to  give  redress,  or  to  prevent 
recurrence.  The  vital  question  is.  Did  at- 
tempts to  define  and  to  check  wrong-do- 
ing begin  only  when  a  political  organiza- 
tion of  mankind  had  come  into  existence? 
It  is  at  this  point  that  we  have  to  fall  back 
upon  a  scientific  and  defensible  account 
of  social  origins. 

There  never  has  been  a  community  of 
men  from  which  the  individual  could  not 
escape  if  he  felt  that  he  must.  The  earth 

61 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

has  been  apportioned  by  its  nations,  but 
unpeopled  regions  remain  where  the  her- 
mit can  exist  if  he  prefers  isolation  to  so- 
ciety. Therefore,  if  men  generally  elect  to 
live  in  society,  it  is  because  they  are  more 
secure  and  more  comfortable  among  neigh- 
bors than  they  could  be  alone  in  the  wil- 
derness. But  they  could  not  be  secure,  cer- 
tainly they  could  not  be  comfortable,  if 
hour  by  hour  they  were  beset  by  assassin, 
marauder,  or  meddler.  They  are  secure 
and  comfortable  in  communities  only  if 
they  enjoy  immunities  and  Uberties.  In  so- 
ciety they  do  in  fact  enjoy  immunities  and 
Uberties  because  most  men  most  of  the 
time  mind  their  own  business  and  keep 
hands  off  their  fellows.  Not  even  the  men 
of  Ulster  in  the  glad  days  of  Cuchulain 
fought  literally  every  man  against  every 
man.  On  occasion  they  could  keep  the 
tribal  peace.  "Their  horses  were  in  one 
enclosure  that  night,"  the  story  runs,  "and 
their  chariot  drivers  at  one  fire." 

Now,  minding  one's  own  business  and 
keeping  hands  off  from  fellow-beings  are 

62 


RIGHTS  OF  THE  STATE 

habits,  and  habits  are  "natural"  in  every 
sense  of  the  word.  They  are  not  insti- 
tuted, they  are  not  invented;  they  grow. 

Habits  of  toleration  are  older  than  men, 
older  than  reason.  They  are  products  of 
ineffective  conflict.  Countless  generations 
of  group-dwelKng  animals,  and  innumer- 
able generations  of  primitive  men  one 
after  another  learned  that  creatures  of  one 
kind  are  approximately  equal  in  strength, 
while  creatures  of  different  kinds  are  un- 
equal. Physical  similarity  carries  with  it 
approximate  equahty  of  power,  and  equal- 
ity of  power  insures  a  measure  of  freedom 
from  meddUng  by  one's  neighbors.  Group- 
dwellers  are  not  born  free  and,  therefore, 
equal.  They  are  born  approximately 
equal  and,  therefore,  acquire  freedom.  In 
the  last  analysis,  toleration  is  a  behavior 
habit  expressive  of  an  equilibrium  of  phy- 
sical strength. 

About  toleration  as  a  habit,  ideas  of 
immunity  and  liberty  began  to  cluster 
as  human  intelligence  developed.  Men 
quarreled  and  settled  their  differences. 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

Bystanders  approved  or  disapproved,  and 
slowly  the  fabric  of  custom  grew.  Dimly 
at  first,  and  then  more  clearly,  men  saw 
that  social  cohesion  is  imperative  if  the 
group  is  to  be  strong  in  war,  and  they  be- 
gan to  understand  that  immunities  and 
liberties,  preventive  of  internal  strife,  are 
necessary  conditions  of  social  cohesion. 
So,  imperceptibly,  I  suppose,  and  with  un- 
imaginable slowness  and  difficulty,  animal 
habits  of  toleration  became  human  mores, 
or  customs  of  immunity  and  liberty. 

As  mores  they  were  entirely  objective. 
The  customary  claims,  immunities,  and 
liberties  of  the  individual  not  only  were 
asserted  by  him;  they  also  were  consented 
to  and  confirmed  by  his  fellows.  They 
were  not  merely  right;  they  were  rights. 
In  a  word,  they  were  "natural  rights"  — 
not  instituted,  not  invented,  but  products 
of  an  unconscious  growth  and  inheritance. 
Collectively,  they  were  the  stuff  or  content 
of  natural  justice.  They  held  men  to- 
gether in  effective  social  cohesion  for  ages 
before  political  organization  came  into 

64 


RIGHTS  OF  THE  STATE 

being.  They  underlie  pohtical  organiza- 
tion now.  They  are  the  moral  foundations 
of  the  responsible  state,  which  adapts  it- 
seK  to  them  and  builds  upon  them. 

Natural  rights  are  of  two  categories. 
There  are  natural  rights  of  the  commu- 
nity, and  natural  rights  of  the  individual. 
Both  the  community  and  the  individual 
have  a  natural  right  to  exist  and  a  nat- 
ural right  to  grow  or  develop. 

K  mankind  or  any  moiety  of  the  human 
race  has  a  moral  right  to  exist,  a  commu- 
nity or  society  has  such  a  right  because  it 
is  only  through  mutual  aid  that  human  life 
is  possible,  and  only  through  social  rela- 
tionships that  the  intellectual  and  the 
moral  life  of  man  can  be  sustained.  The 
natural  right  embodying  and  expressing 
the  moral  right  to  exist  is  the  right  of  self- 
defense,  comprising  on  the  part  of  the 
community  the  right  to  wage  defensive 

war. 

The  right  to  grow  or  develop  is  involved 
in  the  right  to  exist.  When  growth  ceases, 
in  mind  or  body,  death  begins.  This  is  not 

65 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

disputed.  But  actual  growth  brings  things 
to  pass  over  which  controversy  rages  and 
wars  are  fought.  Has  the  individual  a 
moral  right  to  grow  at  the  cost  of  his 
neighbor?  Has  the  conununity  a  right  to 
grow  by  invading  and  colonizing,  or  by 
conquest  and  annexation?  Teutonic  ar- 
rogance has  made  to  these  questions  an 
answer  abhorrent  to  the  conscience  of  the 
civilized  world.  Grotesquely  misappre- 
hending Darwinian  doctrine,  it  has  pro- 
claimed the  superman.  The  survival  of 
the  fit  it  conceives  as  the  survival  of  the 
brutal.  Mercy  toward  the  weak  it  de- 
nounces as  immoral. 

Now,  it  happens  that  "the  fit,"  as  the 
phrase  is  used  in  biology,  are  those  that 
are  adapted  to  the  environment  in  which 
they  happen  to  Kve.  If  the  environment 
is  the  jungle,  tooth  and  claw,  strength  and 
cunning,  ferocity  and  cruelty,  may  have 
survival  value.  But  if  the  environment  is 
human  society,  toleration  and  group  feel- 
ing have  survival  value.  Civilized  human 
society  is  a  moral  environment  which  calls 

66 


RIGHTS  OF  THE  STATE 

for  intelligence,  comprehension,  justice, 
and  good  faith. 

If,  then,  society  is  to  endure,  individual 
growth  is  subject  to  imperative  limita- 
tions. It  must  be  a  function  of  inhibi- 
tions no  less  than  of  spontaneous  actions. 
Natural  justice  prescribes  the  limitations. 
The  individual  has  a  moral  right,  con- 
firmed in  natural  rights,  to  develop  on 
equal  terms  with  fellow  individuals.  All 
have  equal,  but  only  equal  rights  to  life, 
liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness. 

In  like  manner,  if  civilized  human  so- 
ciety is  to  survive  and  civilized  man  is  to 
continue  his  career  of  progressive  achieve- 
ment, the  growth  of  communities  must 
proceed  within  the  limitations  set  by  nat- 
ural justice.  Nations  may  not  equally  de- 
velop. Probably  they  never  will  or  can. 
But  they  must  develop  on  equal  terms. 
No  more  than  individuals  may  they  grow 
by  murder,  theft,  or  fraud.  They  have 
equal  but  not  unequal  natural  right  to 
utilize  the  resources  of  the  earth,  to  trade, 
to  navigate  the  seas.  Only  on  this  basis  of 

07 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

natural  justice  can  an  enduring  peace  be 
established. 

With  the  rise  of  political  organization 
rights  of  a  new  order  come  into  existence. 
These  are  the  rights  that  lawyers  call  posi- 
tive or  juristic.  They  may  be,  and,  as  we 
have  seen,  they  tend  to  become  embodi- 
ments and  expressions  of  natural  rights; 
but  in  their  character  as  positive  or  juris- 
tic they  are  created  by  the  state.  They 
are  of  two  categories,  namely,  rights  of 
the  sovereign  and  rights  of  the  subject. 
Rights  of  the  sovereign  are  immunities  and 
liberties  which  the  state  asserts  and  main- 
tains in  its  own  behalf.  They  comprise, 
first,  rights  of  the  sovereign  as  trustee  for 
the  community  and  for  the  individual; 
and,  second,  the  right  of  the  sovereign  to 
coerce  any  individulal  or  group  or  organiza- 
tion of  individuals.  Rights  of  the  subject 
comprise  rights  to  life  and  security,  rights 
to  liberty,  and  rights  to  opportunity.  In- 
cidentally, and  as  means  to  ends,  they 
comprise  domestic  rights,  including  rights 

68 


RIGHTS  OF  THE  STATE 

of  marriage,  the  right  of  property,  and 
rights  to  bring  action  for  redress  of  in- 
jury. 

For  practical  purposes  all  of  these 
rights  center  in  the  right  of  the  sovereign 
to  coerce.  If  that  one  right  were  not  main- 
tained, law  would  become  admonition 
only.  Positive  rights  would  become  no 
more  than  natural  rights.  It  would  be 
idle  for  the  subject  to  look  to  the  state  for 
security  or  redress.  The  sovereign  would 
cease  to  be  a  trustee  for  community  or  in- 
dividual and  would  become  either  a  mere 
adviser  or  an  oppressor. 

Anarchism,  and  pacifism  of  the  thor- 
oughgoing sort,  deny  the  moral  rightful- 
ness of  any  government  of  man  by  man 
which  involves  resort  to  force.  Anarch- 
ists and  pacifists  have  hitherto  been  rela- 
tively ineffective  minorities,  but  at  the 
present  time  their  number  is  increasing, 
and  their  influence  threatens  to  be  not  in- 
considerable. It  is,  therefore,  important 
to  see  clearly  what  their  creed  involves. 

Broadly,  it  involves  the  resolution  of 

69 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

political  society  into  natural  society  and 
of  positive  rights  into  natural  rights. 
Specifically,  it  means  disintegration  and  a 
probable  resumption  throughout  the  world 
of  local  wars  now  repressed  by  national 
states.  Aggressive  ambition  will  not  cease 
to  invade.  Jealousy  and  hatred,  envy 
and  fanaticism,  ignorance  and  fear,  will 
lend  support  to  ruthlessness.  The  feeble- 
minded, as  now  and  always,  will  aid  and 
abet  the  unprincipled.  Again  there  will 
be  private  vengeance,  family  feuds,  race 
riotings,  and  a  net  increase  of  violence. 

It  is  true  that  there  are  pacifists  who 
profess  to  believe  that  organized  wrong- 
doing is  a  product  of  preexisting  force  and 
would  cease  if  armed  resistance  were  dis- 
continued. The  evidence  is  overwhelm- 
ingly against  them.  More  than  any  war 
hitherto,  the  conflict  to  which  we  now  are 
committed  has  clarified  intelligence  upon 
the  absurd  proposition  that  the  makers  of 
aggressive  war  would  cease  to  slay  and 
loot  if  the  makers  of  defensive  war  should 
cease  to  fight. 

70 


RIGHTS  OF  THE  STATE 

It  is  true,  also,  that  the  amount  of  war 
in  the  world  has  not  diminished,  although 
minor  wars  have  been  stopped  by  polit- 
ical integration.    Statistical  attempts  to 
prove  that  war,  on  the  whole,  has  been 
diminishing  are  not  convincing.  The  true 
explanation  of  this  regrettable  fact,  how- 
ever, gives  no  support  to  the  pacifist  con- 
tention. We  still  have  to  arm  and  to  fight 
for  the  very  simple,  and,  to  clear-seeing 
minds,  very  obvious,  reason  that  the  work 
of  defensive  war  is  not  yet  done.    The 
makers  of  aggressive  war  have  not  yet 
been  put  out  of  business,  and  until  they 
are  put  out  of  business  completely  and 
forever,  we  need  not  look  to  see  a  steep 
descent  of  the  statistical  curve   of  war 
activities.    If  with  sincere  hearts  we  de- 
sire to  see  the  end  of  war,  we  must  with 
grim  determination  translate  from   the 
potential  into  the  imperative  mood  the 
word  of  Holy  Writ,  "They  that  take  the 
sword  shall  perish  by  the  sword." 

There  is  one  contingency  that  troubles 
many  minds,  otherwise  clear  upon  the 

71 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

rightfulness  of  defensive  war,  upon  which 
a  word  should  be  said.  We  have  seen  that 
the  community  has  a  natural  right  to 
grow  as  well  as  to  exist,  but  not  to  grow 
by  aggression.  Can  the  state,  then,  under 
any  circumstances  engage  in  war  in  order 
that  it  may  grow?  Can  a  war  in  assertion 
of  the  right  to  grow  be  construed  as  defen- 
sive? 

If  the  principle  of  natural  justice  at 
which  we  arrived  through  our  analysis  of 
moral  right  and  natural  rights  is  true,  the 
answer  to  this  question  is  reasonably  cer- 
tain. Communities  have  a  natural  right 
to  grow  on  equal  terms.  If  that  right  is 
denied,  the  community  that  suffers  thereby 
clearly  has  a  moral  right  to  assert  its  nat- 
ural right  in  the  premises.  War  in  defense 
of  that  right  is  defensive  war.  Further- 
more, in  a  broad  view  of  natural  justice 
and  of  the  grounds  upon  which  enduring 
peace  may  be  established,  it  is  defensive 
war  if  a  strong  nation  aids  a  weak  one  to 
maintain  its  natural  right  to  grow  on 
equal  terms  with  its  neighbors. 

72 


RIGHTS  OF  THE  STATE 

Greek  and  Roman  writers  were  inter- 
ested in  the  problem  of  safeguarding 
rights.  They  saw  how  easily  an  unscru- 
pulous sovereign  may  ignore  the  rights  of 
subjects  or  ruthlessly  override  them,  and 
they  perceived  the  immense  importance 
of  sound  political  knowledge,  shared  and 
alertly  attended  to  by  free  citizens.  In 
particular,  they  insisted  that  freedom  is 
possible  only  if  the  will  of  the  sovereign  is 
formulated  and  declared  in  advance  of 
action  by  subjects.  Institution  and  pro- 
mulgation are  of  the  essence  of  legality. 

Far  deeper  and  broader  has  been  the 
interest  of  the  Western  mind  in  the  safe- 
guarding of  rights  since  the  days  of  King 
John  and  Magna  Carta.  Rights  were 
there  formulated  and  set  down  in  a  docu- 
ment. From  that  day  until  the  Civil  War 
in  America  there  was  a  growing  reverence 
for  written  guarantees  of  hberty  and  an 
increasing  reliance  on  them.  Probably  no 
secular  writing  has  ever  been  held  so  nearly 
sacrosanct  by  multitudes  of  men  as  the 
written  constitution  of  the  United  States. 

73 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

Yet  the  wiser  interpreters  of  constitu- 
tional law  have  not  failed  to  warn  that 
written  constitutions  are  but  ineffective 
barriers  to  governmental  encroachment 
imless  generation  by  generation  upheld, 
adapted,  and  apphed  in  the  decisions  of 
concrete  cases  by  the  courts.  In  our  own 
country  we  have  fallen  into  the  habit  of 
supposing  that  this  function  can  ade- 
quately be  discharged  only  by  a  supreme 
court  endowed  with  great  and  unique 
powers.  That  this  beUef  is  not  necessarily 
true  has  been  adequately  demonstrated 
in  Professor  A.  V.  Dicey's  illuminating 
exposition  of  England's  unwritten  consti- 
tution, made  up  of  usages  and  precedents, 
**The  Law  of  the  Constitution." 

In  recent  years  we  have  begun  to  see 
that  the  real  restrictions  of  arbitrary  gov- 
ernmental action  and  the  real  guarantees 
of  Uberty  he  even  deeper  in  concrete  fact 
than  judicial  decisions  do.  They  are  in- 
herent in  the  temper  and  habits  of  the 
'  people.  These,  it  is  true,  are  not  always 
stable,   and   wise  men  have   distrusted 

74 


RIGHTS  OF  THE  STATE 

democracies.  Edmund  Burke  thought 
them  vacillating  and  dangerously  radical. 
Sir  Henry  Sumner  Maine,  on  the  contrary, 
believed  that  they  would  prove  to  be  slow- 
minded  and  unprogressive.  Between  these 
opposite  opinions  is  the  view  entertained 
by  a  majority  of  men  experimentally  ac- 
quainted with  the  actual  workings  of 
democracy  in  western  Europe  and  in 
America  at  the  present  time. 

The  basis  of  their  faith  that  democra- 
cies can  cohere,  can  maintain  order  by 
giving  adequate  authority  to  their  govern- 
ments and  yet  restrain  their  governments 
from  arbitrary  action,  and  can  safeguard 
adequately  the  liberty  of  individuals,  is 
a  procedure:  a  popular  habit.  The  pro- 
cedure is  this:  Democracy  bows  to  the 
decision  of  a  majority,  freely  made  in  ac- 
tual and  lawful  election  by  a  broadly  dem- 
ocratic electorate.  By  so  yielding  to  the 
major  will  a  democratic  people  coheres 
and  achieves.  This  action,  however,  pro- 
ceeds upon  a  condition,  which  is,  that  the 
minority  or  the  minorities  shall  at  all 

75 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

times  be  free  to  dissent  intellectually,  to 
protest  in  speech,  to  agitate  and  persuade, 
to  conduct  campaigns  openly,  and  en- 
deavor in  all  peaceful  and  lawful  ways  to 
detach  individuals  from  the  majority  and 
win  them  to  the  support  of  a  minority  in 
the  hope  that  thereby  the  minority  may 
presently  become  the  majority.  By  insist- 
ing upon  this  condition  and  resolutely 
standing  for  all  its  legitimate  impHca- 
tions,  a  democratic  people  safeguards  and 
keeps  its  Uberty. 

One  reservation  must  be  made.  In  time 
of  war  the  liberty  of  minorities  and  of  in- 
dividuals is  inevitably  curtailed.  In  time 
of  war  the  state  rightly  demands  the  loyal 
and  active  cooperation  of  all  citizens. 
Putting  upon  its  government  extraor- 
dinary and  herculean  tasks,  sending  youth 
and  manhood  to  die  that  children  and 
children's  children  may  Uve,  the  state  in 
time  of  war  rightfully  says  that  those  who 
safely  stay  at  home  shall  *'play  the  game  " 
and  not  stand  carping  on  the  side  lines. 
While  war  lasts  things  cannot  be  or  con- 

76 


RIGHTS  OF  THE  STATE 

tinue  "as  usual,"  whether  business,  or 
pleasure,  or  freedom  of  speech.  The  su- 
preme business  in  war  is  to  overwhelm  the 
enemy;  the  supreme  pleasure,  to  antici- 
pate his  unconditional  surrender;  the  su- 
preme freedom,  to  shatter  and  destroy 
the  menace  of  his  eflSciency.  Criticism  of 
blundering  and  ineffectiveness  there  must 
be:  discussion  of  questionable  methods 
and  policies  is  requisite :  but  criticism  and 
discussion  must  be  ordered  intellectually 
and  held  to  the  point.  Open  or  disguised 
obstruction  may  not  be  tolerated. 

Not  until  victory  is  won  and  just  peace 
is  made:  tolerated  then  it  must  be.  If  in 
days  of  peace  the  natural  rights  of  minori- 
ties are  abridged  by  positive  law  or  denied 
by  administrative  action,  the  dissatisfied 
resort  to  secret  meetings,  conspiracies, 
and  force.  When  laboring  under  political 
stress  a  majority  may  be  embarrassed 
seriously  if  hampered  in  quick,  decisive 
action  by  an  obstinate  minority;  never- 
theless, full  recognition  of  the  natural 
rights  of  minorities  is  the  condition  upon 

77 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

which  the  working  unity  of  a  democratic 
people  is  maintained,  and  any  attempt  to 
abridge  by  law  or  otherwise  the  natural 
rights  of  morally  decent  speech  and  peace- 
able assemblage  is  a  blow  at  the  founda- 
tions of  democratic  government  in  the 
responsible  state. 


IV 

DUTIES  OF  THE  STATE 

The  responsible  state  not  only  has  pow- 
ers and  rights;  it  also  has  duties.  No  one 
that  has  had  patience  to  follow  so  far  the 
present  examination  of  political  facts  and 
theories  will  expect  now  a  defense  of  any 
doctrinaire  philosophy  of  governmental 
functions.  The  dogma  which  so  often  we 
have  heard  repeated  in  our  own  country, 
that  the  government  is  best  which  gov- 
erns least,  is  doctrinaire  if  this  word  has 
any  intelligible  meaning.  So  also  is  the 
opposed  dogma  of  state  socialism,  which 
avers  that  governments  should  take  over 
most  of  the  functions  now  discharged 
through  individual  enterprise  and  volun- 
tary cooperation. 

Once,  in  an  ironical  mood,  I  said,  in  an- 
swer to  a  classroom  question,  and  with 
warning  that  my  words  must  not  be  taken 
too  literally,  that  the  anarchist  is  a  man 

79 


WK:^BS£»aWi>Wr;asi^feiMEP»*a^»gi^WSfeait<* 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

who  wants  law  and  government  for  no- 
body  and  for  no  thing;  the  sociaHst,  a 
man  who  wants  law  and  government  for 
everybody  and  for  everything;  and  the 
individualist,  a  man  who  wants  law  and 
government  for  everybody  and  everything 
except  himseK  and  his  own  business.  There 
is  just  enough  truth  m  this  exaggerated 
way  of  putting  the  matter  to  admonish 
us  that  we  should  approach  the  problem 
of  the  duties  of  the  state  with  open  minds 
and  a  sincere  desire  to  discover  what  is 
socially  possible  and  practically  expedi- 
ent no  less  than  what  is  fundamentally 

right. 

We  may  start  upon  our  quest  from  the 

presumption  that  the  duties  of  the  state 
are  not  the  same  at  all  times  and  under  all 
circumstances.  It  is  reasonable  to  assume 
that  they  are  neither  so  simple  nor  so  in- 
disputable in  the  immensely  complex  so- 
ciety of  modern  Europe  and  America  as 
they  were  under  relatively  primitive  con- 
ditions. Above  all,  they  cannot  be  the 
same  when  the  nation  is  at  war,  or  is  men- 

80 


DUTIES  OF  THE  STATE 

aced  by  militarism,  that  they  can  and 
should  be  when  the  world  is  at  peace  and 
sincerely  desirous  of  maintaining  peace. 

The  one  duty  of  the  state,  that  all  citi- 
zens, except  the  philosophical  anarchists, 
admit,  is  the  obligation  to  safeguard  the 
commonwealth  by  repelling  invasion  and 
keeping  the  domestic  peace.  To  discharge 
this  duty  it  is  necessary  to  maintain  a 
police  force  and  a  militia,  and,  presum- 
ably, to  keep  up  a  miUtary  and  a  naval 
establishment.  Such  dissent  from  this 
proposition  as  we  hear  now  and  then  is 
negligible  for  practical  purposes.  Serious 
differences  of  opinion  arise,  however,  when 
it  becomes  necessary  to  decide  how  large 
the  military  and  the  naval  forces  should 
be,  and  how  they  should  be  raised.  With 
good  reason  and  out  of  bitter  experience 
the  democratic  peoples  in  their  thinking 
have  associated  great  armies  with  great 
tyrannies  and  despotic  oppression.  Gen- 
erally they  have  opposed  conscription  and 
universal  military  training.  Great  Britain 
and  the  United  States  have  relied  on  small 

81 


■a-r^jatlW^ity^^'fi''' 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

professional  armies  supplemented  In  time 
of  need  by  volunteer  forces  and,  in  the 
United  States,  by  a  militia  or  national 
guard.    France,  warned  by  historic  dis- 
asters has  laid  upon  all  her  men  of  suit- 
able age  the  obligation  of  military  service. 
We  saw  that  the  problem  of  the  rights 
of  the  state  resolves  itself  into  the  ques- 
tion of  the  moral  right  of  a  state  to  coerce 
the  individual.  In  like  manner,  it  has  be- 
come obvious,  under  the  blazing  light  of 
world-wide  war,  that  the  problem  of  the 
duty  of  the  state  to  safeguard  the  com- 
monwealth resolves  itself  into  the  ques- 
tion whether  national  defense  should  be 
organized  on  a  basis  of  unpartial   con- 
scription and  universal  training  or  upon 
some  less  thoroughgoing  plan.    For  the 
purposes  of  our  present  discussion  ob- 
jections to  universal  military  service  that 
spring  from  selfishness  and  fear  may  be 
dismissed.   Our  busmess  is  to  bring  con- 
siderations of  right  and  expediency  under 
rational  examination. 
From  the  standpoint  of  common  sense 

82 


DUTIES  OF  THE  STATE 


the  first  thing  to  be  said  is  that  the  amount 
of  danger  that  a  nation  presumably  will 
have  to  face  is  a  paramount  considera- 
tion. As  long  as  England  was  in  fact  ade- 
quately protected  by  a  navy,  she  did  not 
need  a  great  army  for  defensive  purposes. 
So  long  as  the  United  States  in  fact  en- 
joyed a  practical  isolation,  we  did  not 
need  either  a  great  army  or  a  great  navy. 
Actually,  as  events  since  1914  have  dem- 
onstrated, England  remained  blind  to 
facts  that  ought  to  have  been  seen  and 
met,  and  deluded  herself  with  false  be- 
liefs about  a  security  that  had  ceased  to 
exist;  and  actually  the  cherished  freedom 
of  the  United  States  from  entanglements 
in  world-politics  was  already  doomed.  If 
in  the  early  summer  of  1914  England  had 
possessed  the  army  that  her  clearer- 
headed  publicists  had  warned  her  to  get 
ready,  the  unspeakable  calamity  of  this 
war  would  not  have  fallen  upon  the  world. 
And  if  the  United  States  had  heeded  the 
call  for  preparedness,  we  should  not  now 
be  asking  how  much  longer  the  war  is  to 

83 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

last.  Of  all  the  follies  that  the  human 
mind  can  be  guilty  of,  the  least  excusable 
is  to  put  trust  in  an  inadequate  army.  Let 
us  either  accept  the  pacifist  contention, 
lay  down  our  arms  and  trust  in  the  suf- 
ficiency of  sweetness  and  light  to  save  us 
from  the  blood-lust  of  the  super-savage, 
or,  believing  that  the  super-savage  can  be 
restrained  only  by  the  kind  of  might  that 
he  is  capable  of  understanding,  let  us 
make  it  mighty  enough  to  restrain  him. 

K  this  principle  be  accepted  the  case 
becomes  fairly  clear.   One  disastrous  ex- 
perience after  another,  including  the  de- 
plorable errors  of  our  Civil  War,  has  dem- 
onstrated that  no  nation  can  safely  rely 
on  a  volunteer  system  when  it  is  caught 
in  the  maelstrom  of  military  struggle. 
Why,  then,  not  face  the  facts  in  a  straight- 
forward and  business-like  way?  The  day 
may  come  —  from  the  depths  of  agonized 
hearts  we  hope  that  it  will  come  —  when 
the  spear  and  the  sword  shall  be  made 
into  ploughshare  and  pruning  hook;  but 
it  has  not  come  yet.  It  may  long  be  de- 

84 


DUTIES  OF  THE  STATE 

layed.  It  cannot  come  until  every  nation 
that  asserts  the  right  to  grow  by  conquest 
has  been  cracked  and  scrapped  by  supe- 
rior physical  force.  Until  then  it  is  the 
plain  duty  of  the  responsible  state  to  make 
its  armed  forces  adequate  to  the  work  in 

hand. 

A  consideration  less  immediate  than 
present  danger,  but  in  the  long  run  gravely 
important,  we  find  in  the  reactions  of  a 
military  system,  good  or  bad,  upon  the 
character  of  the  state  itself.  Before  1914, 
unfortunate  reactions,  assumed  or  taken 
for  granted,  held  the  attention  of  earnest 
men  and  women  who  were  working  de- 
votedly to  bring  about  general  disarma- 
ment and,  in  particular,  to  discourage  mili- 
tary preparedness  in  the  United  States. 
In  apprehensive  minds  military  prepara- 
tions, and,  in  particular,  universal  mili- 
tary training  and  obligation,  were  iden- 
tified with  militarism.  Almost  without 
argument  the  opponents  of  preparedness 
insisted  that  these  things  must  necessa- 
rily foster  the  growth  of  a  military  spirit 

85 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

which  sooner  or  later  would   rush  our 
country  into  unjustifiable  war. 

It  was  a  view,  as  we  now  know,  which 
completely  misapprehended  militarism, 
and  was  blind  to  its  real  menace.  Mili- 
tarism is  not  so  simple,  and  it  cannot  be 
created  by  instructing  citizens  in  the  tasks 
and  duties  of  the  soldier.  The  soul  of  mili- 
tarism is  a  will  to  conquer  which  is  rooted 
in  aggressive  instinct,  and  the  seat  of  that 
soul  is  the  dark  brain  of  a  personal  mon- 
arch who  identifies  his  own  ambitions 
with  the  purposes  of  the  Most  High  and 
proclaims  to  his  people  that  he  rules  by 
divine  right.  The  instruments  of  mili- 
tarism are  a  dynastic  family  and  a  priv- 
ileged class,  ever  fearful  that  a  rising  tide 
of  democracy  will  destroy  their  heredita- 
ments and  sweep  themselves  into  obliv- 
ion. In  all  the  world  and  the  pages  of  his- 
tory there  is  no  record  of  a  democratic 
militarism.  And,  finally,  the  voices  of 
militarism  are  those  ecclesiastical  and 
professorial  retainers  who  expound  and 
instill  the  obligation  to  spread  kultur  by 

86 


DUTIES  OF  THE  STATE 

the  sword.  It  was  one  of  these,  Professor 
Doctor  Werner  Sombart,  who  said:  "The 
idea  that  we  are  the  chosen  people  im- 
poses upon  us  very  great  duties.  ...  If 
it  is  necessary  to  extend  our  territorial 
possessions  so  that  the  increasing  body 
of  the  nation  shall  have  room  to  develop 
itself,  we  will  take  for  ourselves  as  much 
territory  as  seems  to  us  necessary.  We 
shall  also  set  our  foot  wherever  it  seems 
to  us  important  for  strategic  reasons 
in  order  to  preserve  our  unassailable 
strength."  And  thirty-five  hundred  Ger- 
man professors  and  lecturers  like  him  said: 
"Our  belief  is  that  the  salvation  of  the 
kultur  of  Europe  depends  upon  the  vic- 
tory which  German  militarism  is  about  to 
achieve." 

On  the  frontiers  of  Germany  and  under 
the  shadow  of  her  crimes  stands  the  demo- 
cratic republic  of  Switzerland.  Necessa- 
rily, her  citizens  hold  themselves  in  instant 
readiness  for  military  defense.  Switzer- 
land has  universal  military  training  and 
universal  military  obligation,  but  the  soul 

87 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

of  Switzerland  is  free.  The  souls  of  all  the 
nations  are  free  from  which  the  demon 
soul  of  divine  dynastic  right  has  been  cast 
out.  In  those  nations,  however  thoroughly 
they  may  prepare  themselves  against  the 
day  of  defensive  war,  militarism,  in  any 
reasonable  meaning  of  the  word,  does  not 
and  cannot  exist. 

It  is  unhappily  true  that  small  repub- 
lics have  now  and  then  surrendered  their 
wills  to  a  military  dictator,  and  that  a 
plausible  argument  could  be  made  that 
two  militaristic  empires.  Imperial  Rome 
and  Napoleonic  France,  were  born  of  such 
surrender.  Fairly  examined,  the  facts  do 
not  bear  out  the  contention.  Caesar  and 
Napoleon  were  not  made  dictators  by 
democracies  organized  for  war  and  bent 
on  conquest.  They  rose  to  power  because 
they  were  competent  to  exercise  it  in  de- 
mocracies unorganized  and  unprepared 
for  war  when  their  existence  was  imper- 
iled by  aggressive  foes.  They  saved  their 
states  from  impending  ruin  brought  peril- 
ously near  by  social  disintegration  and  un- 

88 


DUTIES  OF  THE  STATE 

preparedness.  It  is  not  a  fantastic  notion 
that  the  history  of  Europe  would  have 
been  altogether  diflFerent  from  the  record 
as  it  stands  if  republican  Rome  in  the  cen- 
tury before  Christ  had  been  sincerely  pa- 
triotic, honest  and  business-like  in  its  af- 
fairs, and  if  republican  France,  after  the 
revolution,  had  been  adequate  to  the 
great  enterprise  of  democratic  govern- 
ment. 

This  reflection  brings  us  to  one  further 
consideration  upon  expedient  policies  and 
essentially  right  ways  and  means  of  safe- 
guarding the   commonwealth.    Military 
training  and  obligation  react  not  only 
upon  the  character  of  the  state  as  an  en- 
tity, but  also  upon  individuals  in  their 
capacity   as   citizens.    The   evidence   is 
abundant  that  these  reactions  are  not  such 
as  the  pacifist  argument  has  assumed. 
Universal  military  training  and  obliga- 
tion do  not  brutalize,  they  do  not  impair 
the  moral  sense  or  the  intellectual  vision, 
they  do  not  blunt  the  democratic  con- 
science.    Experience   has   demonstrated 

89 


14 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

that  their  actual  eCFect  is,  all  in  all,  the 
precise  opposite  of  these  things.  Where- 
ever  they  have  fairly  and  adequately  been 
tried,  as  in  Switzerland  and  in  France,  and 
wherever  some  approach  to  them  has  been 
made,  as  in  Australia  and  of  late,  in  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States,  they  have 
demonstrated  their  educational  value. 
They  have  diminished  hoodlumism  and 
rudeness.  They  have  made  the  average 
man  alert,  cheerful,  careful,  and  thought- 
ful of  his  fellows.  They  have  made  him 
orderly  and  diligent.  They  have  not  made 
him  abjectly  obedient,  as  the  German  sol- 
dier is,  but  intelligently  and  loyally  obedi- 
ent, conscious  that  his  obedience  is  ren- 
dered not  to  a  tyrant,  but  to  a  community 
and  as  part  of  a  great  social  cooperation. 
These  results  spring  from  the  nature  of 
the  facts.  Universal  military  training  and 
universal  military  obligation  are  demo- 
cratic. They  are  equitable  and,  therefore, 
just.  As  such  they  strongly  appeal  to  the 
average  sense  of  a  square  deal.  They  place 
all  men  upon  the  same  footing  in  the  face 

90 


DUTIES  OF  THE  STATE 

of  danger  and  death.  The  draft  resorted 
to  in  our  Civil  War  was  not  equitable  and 
it  provoked  a  just  resentment.  A  volun- 
teer system  is  not  equitable.  It  throws  the 
burden  of  defending  the  commonwealth 
upon  the  conscientious  and  lets  the  slacker 
escape.   It  is  not  only  morally  indefensi- 
ble, it  is  also  biologically  and  socially  in 
the  long  run  disastrous:  it  kills  off  a  rel- 
atively large  proportion  of  the  best  stocks 
and  saves  alive  the  worst  stocks  to  per- 
petuate the  race.  Democracy  must  build 
upon  the  broad  and  deep  foundations  of 
equity  and  wisdom,  or  it  will  fail.   It  is 
not  enough  to  equalize  voting  power  and 
to  make  men  equal  before  the  law.  They 
must  be  made  equal  in  obligation.    In 
France  more  clearly  than  elsewhere  this 
truth  has  been  perceived  by  the  average 
man.  He  knows  that  his  military  system 
is  just,  and  this  knowledge  is  one  of  the 
great  factors  in  the  making  of  that  noble 
comradeship  which   is  the   solidarity  of 
the  armies  of  France  and  of  the  French 
people. 

91 


I 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

I  realize  that  these  statements  as  I  have 
made  them  are  in  form  dogmatic,  but 
they  are  not,  I  think,  dogmatic  in  sub- 
stance. Rather,  they  are  broad  inductions 
from  concrete  facts  brought  home  to  us 
by  the  war  to  which  we  are  committed 
and  which,  I  hope,  will  receive  increasing 
attention  from  patriotic  and  thoughtful 
men. 

When  the  state  has  discharged  its  ob- 
ligation to  safeguard  the  commonwealth, 
it  must  decide  whether  it  has  then  fulfilled 
its  whole  duty.  The  political  philoso- 
phers of  Greece  did  not  think  so.  Those 
great  teachers,  to  whom  our  debt  can 
never  be  paid,  believed  that  the  state  is 
organized  civilization,  and  that  it  is  rec- 
reant if  it  fails  to  cherish  civilization  or 
neglects  to  promote  and  perfect  it.  The 
classical  writers  did  not  draw  that  dis- 
tinction between  the  state  and  the  govern- 
ment with  which  we  are  familiar,  and  it 
was,  therefore,  reserved  for  modern  theo- 
rists to  advance  the  proposition  that  while 


DUTIES  OF  THE  STATE 

the  promotion  of  civilization  is  undeniably 
a  function  of  organized  society,  it  is  not 
properly  a  function  of  government.  The 
sole  business  of  government,  they  have 
argued,  is  to  make  life  so  secure  and  in- 
dividual activity  so  free  that  citizens  may 
spontaneously  and  without  fear  devote 
themselves  to  interests  and  pursuits  which 
are  the  content  of  civilization  and  by 
which,  from  age  to  age,  it  is  enriched. 

The  doctrine  of  minimal  governmental 
function,  which  already  I  have  charac- 
terized as  doctrinaire,  has  not  been  acted 
on  consistently  by  any  state,  nor  even  by 
a  political  party.  Only  one  writer  of  first 
importance,  Herbert  Spencer,  has  con- 
sistently held  to  it  in  theory.  Spencer 
denies  the  moral  rightfulness  of  govern- 
ment that  does  more  than  defend  the  state 
and  enforce  the  law  of  equal  liberty.  He 
has  made  few  converts,  and  partly,  I 
think,  because,  even  as  pure  theory  and 
apart  from  practical  considerations,  his 
argument  gets  wrecked  on  the  question. 
How,  concretely  and  actually,  shall  the 

93 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

law  of  equal  liberty  be  enforced  if  we  con- 
ceded the  rightfulness  of  coercion  to  that 
end?  If  undertaking  to  enforce  equal  lib- 
erty, the  state  may  invade  my  pocket-book 
or  my  bank  account  to  pay  for  courts  of 
justice,  and  may  keep  me  in  jail  if  I  com- 
mit crime  or  tort,  why  may  it  not  obtain 
unforced  obedience  to  basic  moral  law  by 
training  my  boy  in  school?  If  a  govern- 
ment may  righteously  quell  riot,  why  may 
it  not  prevent  riot  by  abating  riot-breed- 
ing conditions?  Mr.  Spencer's  answers  to 
questions  like  these  are  not  his  most  con- 
vincing words,  and  I  doubt  if  the  human 
mind  has  yet  discovered  a  logical  middle 
ground  between  anarchistic  denial  of  the 
moral  rightfulness  of  any  government 
whatsoever,  and  admission  that  govern- 
ments may  promote  civilization  as  well 
as  defend  it. 

What,  then,  is  civilization?  It  is  easier 
now  to  answer  this  question  than  it  was 
a  generation  ago.  Objective  contrasts  aid 
intellectual  discrimination.  Comprehen- 
sively, civilization  is  all  that  kultur  is  not. 

94 


DUTIES  OF  THE  STATE 

Civilization  is  the  sum  of  urbane  achieve- 
ment since  men  began  to  live  in  towns.  It 
is  not  circumscribed  by  age,  or  region,  or 
race.  It  is  a  measureless  heritage,  and  the 
possession  of  mankind.    Kultur  by  con- 
trast comprises  the  social  order,  impedi- 
menta, and  purpose  of  a  tribally  minded 
folk  that  has  not  evolved  beyond  the  con- 
ceit that  it  is  a  peculiar  and  chosen  people. 
Arts  and  processes,  wealth  and  splen- 
dor, monuments  and  temples,  industry 
and  trade,  science  and  letters,  are  civiliza- 
tion in  its  outward  aspect.  Subjectively, 
inwardly,  civilization  is  honor,  fidelity  to 
obligations,  and  human  comprehension. 
As  its  name  denotes,  it  arose  with  the  city- 
state.  It  grew  with  the  expansion  of  polit- 
ical organization,  and  through  the  cen- 
turies it  was  fed  by  the  interminglings  of 
men  and  contacts  established  between  one 
culture  and  another  throughout  the  known 
world.    Honor  was  its  soul  at  birth  be- 
cause, as  has  been  shown,  nothing  less 
than  good  faith  could  hold  together  men 
of  diflFerent  breeds  when  tribal  organiza- 

9S 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

tion  oroke  down.  The  performance  of 
obligations,  the  fulfiUing  of  contracts,  the 
keeping  of  treaties,  has  ever  been  the 
habit  of  civihzation,  because  honor  de- 
mands these  things,  and  without  them 
there  could  be  no  truce  of  feud  or  petty 
war,  and,  therefore,  no  periods  of  peace  in 
which  the  creative  arts  could  flourish  and 
gam  ground.  Comprehension  of  man  by 
man  civilization  has  striven  for  and  taught, 
because  only  thereby  can  the  countless 
varieties  of  men  be  incorporated  and  as- 
similated in  the  expanding  state.  Kultur 
can  scorn  an  alien  race  because  its  aim  is 
not  to  assimilate  but  to  conquer.  It  can 
make  scraps  of  paper  of  its  obligations  be- 
cause it  recognizes  no  other  source  of  right 
than  its  own  imperial  will. 

Civilization  ameliorates  human  misery. 
It  humanizes  conduct.  It  enlightens  the 
human  mind.  It  makes  social  intercourse 
polite.  All  these  things  it  does  as  recog- 
nizing in  amelioration  and  in  kindliness, 
in  urbanity  and  in  enlightenment,  quali- 
ties which  are  their  own  justification.   It 

96 


DUTIES  OF  THE  STATE 

holds   a  deep  and  burning  indignation 
against  wanton  destruction  and  savagery, 
and  it  does  not  permit  us  to  forget  that 
the  outward  bearing  of  the  cultivated  man 
or  woman,  a  product  of  the  life  of  towns, 
is  unmistakably  different  from  rudeness. 
It  admires  intellect  and  renders  homage  to 
it.   Kultur  cares  only  for  efficiency,  and 
supremely  only  for  the  efficiency  that 
masters  and  rules.   For  mental  power  it 
cares,  as  a  means  to  mastery.    For  eco- 
nomic amelioration  it  cares,  as  a  thing 
necessary  to  the  maintenance  of  armies 
and  the  vigorous  growth  of  a  soldier- 
breeding  population.    For  social  order  it 
cares,  as  a  means  of  discipline.  For  educa- 
tion it  cares,  as  a  teaching  of  obedience 
and  a  preparation  for  war.  It  prefers  rude- 
ness to  civility,  and  brutality  to  gentle- 
ness, as  more  aggressive  and  fear-inspiring. 
The  forgiveness  of  enemies,  the  out-reach- 
ing of  mercy,  and  the  uncommanded  play 
of  intellect  in  the  sheer  joy  of  scientific 
discovery  or  of  artistic  creation,  it  cannot 
understand. 

97 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 


For  the  responsible  state  the  under- 
standing of  civUization  is  a  duty;  a  duty 
as  clear  as  that  of  understanding  the  dif- 
ference between  barbaric  tribahsm  and 
political  organization.  Understanding  a 
civilization  that  holds  fast  by  honor,  that 
ameliorates  and  humanizes,  that  enlight- 
ens and  makes  urbane,  the  responsi- 
ble state  is  under  moral  obligation  to 
strengthen  and  promote  it. 

Is  it,  however,  under  obligation  —  we 
return  now  to  our  question  —  to  foster 
the  enterprises  of  civilization  through  gov- 
ernmental activity,  maintained  by  taxa- 
tion and  resorting  to  force?  To  be  more 
specific,  is  it  the  duty  of  the  modern  re- 
sponsible state  —  above  all,  of  the  demo- 
cratic state  —  to  ameliorate  the  economic 
and  the  social  lot  of  man  through  eco- 
nomic activity  beyond  the  protection  of 
property  and  the  enforcement  of  con- 
tracts. 

The  sociahst  answers  "yes."  The  ex- 
treme individualist  says  "no."  We  have 
seen  reason  to  doubt  whether  a  morally 

98 


DUTIES  OF  THE  STATE 

authoritative  answer  can  be  found  in  the 
principles  of  natural  justice.  Expediency 
must  be  our  guide,  and  upon  grounds  of 
expediency  a  majority  of  disputants  are 
content  to  rest. 

The  socialists  contend  that  we  are  now 
living  under  a  social  order  that  is  wasteful 
and  unjust,  and  which  individualism  can- 
not make  right.  The  basis  of  this  order  is 
private  property  in  land  and  in  the  in- 
struments of  economic  production.  The 
state  has  created  private  property,  it  en- 
forces contracts  which  it  assumes  are 
freely  made,  and  it  encourages  competi- 
tion by  forbidding  or  discouraging  com- 
binations in  restraint  of  trade.  These  legal 
conditions  of  economic  activity  having 
been  established,  waste  and  injustice,  the 
socialist  declares,  are  inevitable  conse- 
quences and  have  become  menacing. 
The  wastefulness  of  competition,  he  al- 
leges, has  always  been  acknowledged,  and 
by  none  more  openly  than  by  the  ablest 
captains  of  industry  and  finance,  who  have 
persistently  attempted  to  prevent  it  by 

99 


THE  BESPONSIBLE  STATE 

entering  into  understandings  and  creating 
combinations  which   the  law  discounte- 
nances. The  state  has  msisted  on  competi- 
tion in  the  beUef  that,  even  if  not  econom- 
ical, it  is  none  the  less  an  automatically 
working  means  of  effecting  equitable  dis- 
tribution-   This  belief  the  socialist  tells 
us  is  false.  Land  comprises  not  only  agri- 
cultural  terrain,   but   also   mineral    re- 
sources, water  power,  forests,  and  areas 
advantageous   for    industry    and    trade. 
Held  as  private  property  they  become  the 
possession  of  a  relatively  small  class  of 
owners.  Supplementing  natural  monopo- 
lies are  corporate  rights  and  franchises 
which  the  state  creates.   Enjoying  these, 
men  of  superior  business   courage  and 
sagacity  have  been  able  to  gather  to  them- 
selves opportunity,  profit,  and  power,  and 
the  multitude  more  and  more  has  been 
placed  at  capitalistic  mercy.   Nominally, 
and  in  legal  assumption,  there  may  be 
freedom  of  contract  between  the  employer 
and  the  wage-earner,  but  practically,  be- 
cause of  the  power  of  the  one  and  the  help- 

100 


DUTIES  OF  THE  STATE 

lessness  of  the  other,  the  wage  contract  is 
made  under  duress. 

The  individualist,  answering,  says  that 
the  resources  of  the  earth  are  by  no  means 
yet  monopolized,  and  that  the  way  to  suc- 
cess is  open  to  every  man  who  has  the  per- 
sisting will  to  fare  forth  upon  it.  Competi- 
tion may  be  wasteful,  —  undoubtedly  it 
is;  unscrupulous  political  influences  may 
have  created  privileges  and  rewarded 
henchmen  with  franchises,  —  we  know 
that  they  have,  —  and  men  may  not  be 
equal  in  bargaining  power.  Nevertheless, 
under  the  relatively  great  economic  liberty 
of  individualism,  an  economic  organiza- 
tion, industrial,  commercial,  and  finan- 
cial, has  grown  up  which  is  staggering  in 
its  magnitude  and  amazing  in  its  com- 
plexity. Working  in  it  and  through  it,  the 
industrial  nations  have  produced  a  volume 
of  material  goods  that  has  enabled  theu- 
populations  to  multiply  and  to  live  not  only 
above  the  plane  of  want,  but  in  comfort. 

Furthermore,  the  individual  initiative 
and  enterprise  which  have  created  mate- 

101 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

rial  well-being,  have  organized  also  count- 
less agencies  of  specific  amelioration-  Sci- 
entific research  has  been  supported  and 
encouraged.  Medicine,  surgery,  and  san- 
itation have  diminished  physical  suffer- 
ing to  an  extent  beyond  the  power  of 
imagination  to  picture.  The  relief  of  ac- 
tual need  is  in  general  assured.  With  vol- 
untary activity  in  these  humane  tasks 
governments  have  cooperated.  They  have 
permitted  wage-earners  to  organize  in  un- 
ions. They  have  restricted  the  hours  of 
labor  of  women  and  children.  They  have 
required  the  stated  payment  in  lawful 
money  of  wages  earned.  They  have  re- 
quired safe  construction  of  the  dwellings 
of  the  poor,  and  wholesome  living  condi- 
tions. They  have  cleaned  the  streets,  and 
opened  parks,  playgrounds,  and  libraries. 
They  have  provided  schools  and  required 
children  to  attend  them. 

Between  the  socialist  and  the  individ- 
ualist, who  shall  decide .f^  Has  the  one  or 
the  other  made  out  a  convincing  case  of 
the  duty  of  the  state? 

102 


DUTIES  OF  THE  STATE 

Assuredly,  no.  The  only  thing  made 
clear  is  that  the  question  remains  open, 
and  therefore  the  duty  of  the  state  in  re- 
spect to  it  is,  I  think  we  shall  agree,  to 
keep  it  open  until  there  shall  be  a  more  de- 
cisive and  satisfying  meeting  of  minds  upon 
the  issues  involved  than  is  possible  now. 

This  means,  it  will  be  said,  a  waiting  or 
drifting  policy.  I  should  prefer  to  say  that 
it  means  experiment  and  an  experimental 
policy.  Experiments  in  cooperation,  in- 
cluding so-called  "syndicalism"  and  local 
communism,  experiments  in  the  municipal 
ownership  and  control  of  public  utilities 
and  of  basic  trades  and  industries,  ex- 
periments in  national  ownership  of  rail- 
roads and  mines,  are  being  tried,  and  per- 
haps will  more  extensively  be  tried  as 
time  goes  on.  I  doubt  if  any  one  is  wise 
enough  to  say  that  they  certainly  will  fail 
or  that  they  certainly  will  work  out  well. 
Whatever  happens,  it  will  be  the  part  of 
wisdom  to  observe  them  and  to  learn  from 
them. 

As  guardian  of  the  commonwealth  and 

103 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

of  civilization  the  state  is  under  obliga- 
tion to  be  efficient,  but  its  efficiency  must 
be  a  civilized  efficiency,  and  it  must  not 
break  the  spirit  of  a  free  people  or  dis- 
courage their  initiative. 

Great  has  been  the  vaunting  and  the 
praise  of  German  efficiency.    The  world 
looked  on  in  admiration  as  the  German 
Empire,  through  nearly  half  a  century  of 
peace,  extended  its  commerce,  created  in- 
dustries, perfected  municipal  administra- 
tion, organized  education,  diminished  un- 
employment, and  mitigated  misfortune. 
To-day  the  world  stands  aghast  at  the 
power  of  German  militarism  to  destroy 
and  lay  waste.  Admiration  is  dead  and  no 
resurrection  awaits  it,  for  we  know  that 
the  whole  intent  of  efficiency  under  Hohen- 
zollern   rule   was   to   put   "Deutschland 
liber  AUes"  and  make  its  Kaiser  lord  of 
the  earth.  Other  things,  too,  we  know,  for 
in  exposing  her  purpose  Germany  has 
revealed  the  moral  and  intellectual  dev- 
astation of  her  people,  made  craven  by 
authority  and  fear. 

104 


DUTIES  OF  THE  STATE 

The  nations  that  have  summoned  their 
manhood  and  devoted  their  resources  to 
the  mighty  task  of  destroying  the  power 
and  the  menace  of  militarism  were  not 
efficient  for  military  achievement.  They 
were  in  no  way  prepared  for  war.  Sud- 
denly, and  in  the  face  of  difficulties  al- 
most insuperable,  they  have  been  forced 
to  create  armies,  to  produce  munitions, 
and  to  organize  the  mechanism  of  society 
for  prolonged  and  relentless  fighting. 
Necessarily,  they  have  centralized  com- 
mand. Industry  and  trade  have  been 
brought  under  authoritative  regulation. 
The  wastes  and  ineptitudes  of  an  indi- 
vidualistic regime  which  socialism  de- 
nounced, were  encountered  as  realities, 
and  the  strong  hand  of  government  was 
laid  upon  them.  Small  wonder  it  is  that 
thoughtful  men  to-day  are  apprehensive. 
To  save  themselves  from  Prussian  domi- 
nation must  free  peoples  Prussianize  them- 
selves? Is  German  efficiency  the  only 
efficiency  that  can  now  survive? 

A  calm  survey  of  all  the  facts  should  re- 

105 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

assure  us.  It  was  the  spontaneous  power, 
the  individual  initiative,  and  the  quick, 
voluntary  cooperation  of  free  peoples  that 
met  the  first  onrush  of  Teuton  hosts.  It 
was  the  democratic  habit  of  facing  emer- 
gencies courageously,  the  democratic  re- 
silience, and  the  democratic  readiness  to 
make    new    adjustments    demanded    by 
altered  conditions  that  made  possible  and 
rendered  certain  the  successful  reconsti- 
tution  of  the  social  order  for  the  tasks  of 
war.   In  these  qualities  of  democracy  we 
may  trust.    The  democratic  state  is  in- 
deed a  mechanism  infinitely  complex,  but 
not  an  inflexible,  unalterable  mechanism 
as  of  brass  or  steel.  It  is  a  vital  mechan- 
ism, flexible  and  adaptive.  A  living  body, 
animate  and  conscious,  it  can  meet  crises 
or  fall  into  habit.    It  can  learn  by  trial 
and  error,  and  it  can  anticipate  by  reason. 
The  war  will  end,  and  the  necessity  for 
centralized  command  will  once  more  be 
less  imperative.    It  is  improbable,  how- 
ever, that  the  old  individualism  will  come 
back  in  all  its  irresponsibility  and  inade- 

106 


DUTIES  OF  THE  STATE 

quacy.  We  shall  demand  coordination 
and  correlation.  We  shall  demand  con- 
servation and  economy.  We  shall  insist 
upon  a  more  equitable  distribution  of  the 
net  product  of  toil.  But  socialism  of  a 
mechanical,  static  type  we  may  be  very 
sure  will  not  appeal.  The  social  system 
will  become  not  simpler,  but  more  com- 
plex; not  harder  and  more  resistant,  but 
more  adaptive;  not  more  authoritative, 
but  more  intelligent. 

These  things  will  happen  because,  after 
all,  democracy  does  learn  from  experience, 
and,  after  all,  natural  selection  goes  on  in 
the  human  race  and  slowly  the  race  im- 
proves. The  incompetent  and  the  irre- 
sponsible are  many,  but  increasing  social 
pressure  and  the  struggle  for  existence 
make  their  lot  ever  harder  and  will  con- 
tinue to  eliminate  them.  Next  after  mili- 
tarism, their  number  and  their  political 
power  is  the  greatest  present  menace  to 
civilization.  They  are  the  stuff  that  an- 
archism is  made  of.  Only  as  their  relative 
influence  diminishes,  only  as  democracy 

107 


THE  RESPONSIBLE  STATE 

develops  a  more  generous  admiration  of 
intellect  and  a  deeper  appreciation  of 
character,  and  more  clearly  sees  that  while 
all  men  rightly  may  vote,  not  all  men  are 
competent  to  organize  and  to  govern,  can 
the  responsible  state  become  in  the  high- 
est degree  eflScient.  Not  by  the  crass  sub- 
stitution of  a  new  social  order  for  an  old, 
not  by  revolution  nor  by  authority,  but 
through  mental  and  moral  evolution  will 
justice  come,  and  the  good  life. 

For,  let  us  never  forget,  the  responsible 
state  is  not  an  abstraction.  It  is  a  politi- 
cally organized  people,  and  a  politically 
organized  people  is  a  body  of  citizens.  If 
the  state  is  eflScient,  it  is  because  they  are 
competent.  If  its  poHcies  are  wise,  it  is 
because  they  have  the  open  mind.  Only 
in  their  individual  hearts  can  the  honor 
of  the  state  be  kept  untarnished;  in  their 
individual  souls  its  glory  lives. 


THE  END 


0)e  miter^ibe  J^xtjSH 

CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U   .   S   .  A 


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